


Bah, Humbug!

by Englandwouldfall



Series: Frigging Festivities [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas also complains a lot, Christmas fic, Dean complains a lot, Dean needs to deal with his feelings, Doctor!Castiel, F/M, M/M, Romance, a certain lack of festive feelings, ex-addict Sam, hospital au, mild sexuality crisis, nurse!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Englandwouldfall/pseuds/Englandwouldfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everyone's had a bit of a crappy year, Dean is tired of thanklessly breaking his back trying to help lost causes, Cas is fed up of being sued for trying to save people and Christmas is most definitely cancelled. </p><p>Or, one the many ways hating the festive season brings the broken (or maybe not quite) together.</p><p>And… maybe Christmas isn’t so bad after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thankless Giving

**Author's Note:**

> So, all Christmas fics are fluffy and cheery with lots of festive feelings and what not. I've been stuck writing essays and doing work all December, so I felt like writing about people who AREN'T feeling the Christmas buzz. I always wanted to write a hospital AU, so then this happened.
> 
> I don't know anything about the American hospital system, so please forgive all inaccuracies in that one. This story also talks about Sam previously been addicted to drugs and vaguely talks about John Winchester's death/previous relationship with alcohol, as a warning!
> 
> The plan, of course, is for all of this to have Christmas chapter done before Christmas, New Years chapter done before New Years etc.

Maybe Dean picked his career based on a TV show that was every bit as unrealistic as Sam always told him it was, but he’s a good nurse. He didn’t expect to fall in love with the job quite so easily (nor did Bobby, or Sam, or his Dad either), but over the years he’s realised it’s pretty much perfect. 

He’s been trying to take care of people since he was four and at least when they were in hospital they kind of had to accept his help, rather than trying to leave home, or drinking themselves into a stupor, or blocking out conversations he was trying to have about all the rest with coke and a shitty junky girlfriend. So, whilst he spends his days surrounded by sick people, cleaning up shit and piss, he finds that he generally loves his job. 

Except days like today. It’s the beginning of a _long_ shift, and he’s already pretty much done with thanklessly cleaning up mess and helping people who don’t really want to be helped, or else look down on him for not being qualified to wear a lab coat. Yesterday, he had a patient he’d kinda liked trying to score some drugs of a young Doctor who probably should have known better, and he’d had a patient he’d joked with earlier than morning die, just like that, and another who _needed_ this operation turned down thanks to shitty insurance. A bad day at work at a hospital usually involves death and shit, and it leaves him with a hangover equivalent that clings onto the side of his brain till he winds up feeling useless and mellow. 

Then, course, he starts thinking about his family. That quickly leads to a full on breakdown involving too much Tequila and drunk dialling Sammy which, as Bobby has told him on several occasions, he should be too old and mature for at this point. 

So, in the name of not concluding the day drunk and alone (or maybe not alone, depending on whether it’s a needy drunk kinda night), he dragged his ass out of bed early in order to indulge a little in a couple of the things that actually make him happy; a run, decent coffee, a bacon sandwich and a quick visit to see how Tessa’s getting on. 

Tessa is one of those revolving door patients that’s in the hospital so much she knows them all by name. She’s accident prone as a character fault, but Dean was in the room when she was told that they thought she had cancer, and when she came out of surgery for the first time, and when she started her first round of chemo. She’s funny and strong and likes Dean the best, but she’d been in remission for a good few months before Jo told him she was back in for another round of chemo. This time, she went and fell down the last couple of steps whilst carrying a tray full of wine glasses, so she spent yesterday having piece of glass removed from her foot and has been admitted for a few days until she recovers. Sucks for Tessa, obviously, but as much as Dean mostly wishes she never had to set foot in a hospital again, she makes his mornings a little better. 

“Hey, Tessa,” Dean grins, stepping into the area around her bed with a smile, “looking smoking, as always.” 

“You like my new haircut?” Tessa quips back, smiling. It’s kind of harrowing that it’s all gone all over again. He can remember Tessa losing her hair the first time; crying into a handheld mirror with a chunk of dark hair in her hand, until one of the female nurses prized it out of her hands and told her she still looked beautiful. Dean hadn't really known what to do other than keep flirting with her in the same way that he did all patients, which seemed to more or less work. 

“Shows off the lovely shape of your head,” Dean says, “how you holding up, Tess?” 

“Not too shabby, Winchester,” She says, cracking another smile. It’s weak, but this point in the chemo tends to be shittiest from patient’s reports so he’s not too worried, except for that part where he is. “You drew the short straw working today, or something?” 

“Or something,” Dean agrees, smoothing the bed sheets out on one side of her bed and absently checking her chart to check everything’s okay. Technically, he’s not even on this ward, but his shift hasn’t even started yet so he’s pretty sure no one’s gonna bust his ass for doing more work. “What time your family coming?” 

“Visiting hours,” Tessa says, eyes sparkling. 

“You don’t need me to sneak them in early?” 

“No,” Tessa smiles, “thank you, Dean.” 

“All right,” Dean says, “well, I have a shift to work… but, I’m trying to avoid this crazy blonde doctor from paediatrics, you don’t mind if I come have my break with you today? I’ll tell her I have a hot date lined up.” 

“You go do what they pay you for, Dean,” Tess says, waving away from his bed. 

“You mean it’s not to stand around looking pretty?” 

“Sod off,” she grins, smiling properly this time, and Dean bows out with a salute. “See you later.” 

Just beyond the door, Dr Milton is waiting for him with an irritated expression. Dean feels the last of today’s good humour slipping away from him pre-emptively because, yeah, maybe Dr Castiel Milton is the single only person in the world who could match up to (and probably surpass) Dr Sexy… but he's also a giant douchebag (besides, that’s a sexuality crisis that Dean had been happily putting off for a long time before Cas walked into Dean’s hospital four months ago wearing that god damn lab coat and staring at him like that's what he was paid for). 

He could deal with Cas being one fine piece of ass, too, if he wasn’t the single Doctor that doesn’t get along with him in the whole hospital (because, whatever Sam says be damned, he does have some levels of control). 

He gets all up in his space and watches what he does like he doesn’t trust him ( _personal space, Cas_ ) and he checks and rechecks his work like he’s just waiting for Dean to fuck up. He doesn’t trust Dean’s judgement. He doesn’t let him do his job. And, most of all, he doesn’t like the way Dean talks to his patients. 

Dean works on the general assumption that just because someone’s sick, it doesn’t mean they particularly want to be treated like a victim. He flirts with Tessa and the others because, hey, if you’re having poison pumped through your insides and the very real prospect of a time limit hanging above you at all times, it’s nice to know that there’s someone who thinks you’re something more than a cancer patient. Whilst Cas is undoubtedly a bloody brilliant Doctor, he can also be cold and unemotional before he turns on _his_ brand of charm, which is certainly of the more professional variety. Every time Dean offers to sneak in someone’s relatives, or sneak them a cheeseburger (where appropriate, of course), or bend the rules in any way to make someone feel special, Cas appears right behind him giving him one of those looks that make Dean want to pull his hair out. 

He’s good at his job. His patients like him. His colleagues like him. 

Except Cas, who hates him for unfathomable reasons unknown, which he really doesn’t need to deal with today of all days. 

“What?” Dean demands, glaring at Cas for a few long seconds. “You gonna report me for giving a shit about my patients, Doctor?” 

“She isn’t your patient today, nurse.” 

“So sue me,” Dean says, mostly because he knows (from Jo, who likes to tell him the gossip about Doctor Milton as if Dean actually wants to hear it), that some asshole is suing Cas for some stupid reason that probably won’t stick, but is still a pain in the ass for all involved. Malpractice law suits are pretty much a dead cert for Doctor’s in general, but this is supposedly the first time Cas has had to deal with it and if Dean’s feeling vicious and unfair, then maybe it’s just because life is vicious and unfair. 

When good, lovely people like Tessa have to have cancer and he can’t do anything. When people like his own family waste their good health on abusing their bodies like they’ll live forever. Whilst he wants to want there to be some justice, and for Tessa to live when she clearly deserves to, he can’t detangle that from the fact that he’d literally fall over and die for his family if it’d help. Not that his efforts ever have, really. 

Cas narrows his eyes at him. 

“Your shift starts in a minute. I suggest you make it there on time.” 

“Well,” Dean says, offering Cas his best sarcastic smile, “have a good day, Doctor.” 

* 

He doesn’t know about Cas, but Dean is not having a good day. 

In fact, his day gradually gets worse and worse as it continues onwards. First, he’s dealing with some guy who needs a liver transplant, but almost definitely will never get one because he was a coke addict for a couple of years when he was younger. Benny makes the connection and sends Dean over to work on another side of the ward where he can’t think on it too much, but it still plays on his mind like a damn broken record. 

“He’s clean,” Benny says, about ten minutes before Dean is supposed to go on his break, and Dean isn’t sure whether he means Sam or liver transplant guy, but either way you never really know. One thing working in a hospital has taught him is that you can never really be too sure with ex-addicts, which is the kind of knowledge that burns in the pit of his stomach when he’s trying to reassure himself that Sammy is here, that he’s got him back, that they’re living in the same state now, and he’s not going to disappear into the ether all over again. Benny starts to ask him if he’s sure he and Sam, or even just him, don’t want to join him for Thanksgiving, but Dean cuts him off before he can finish the question and half runs back to Tessa's ward. 

“Hey, Tessa,” Dean says, falling down into the seat next to her with a grimace. 

“Rough day at the office?” She asks, and there’s something all kinds of wrong about that. Dean’s the one with health on his side, whilst Tessa is hooked up to some shitty machines that make her sick. He can’t talk to Tessa about how crap it is that people die, because she doesn’t need to hear that. 

“Nah, I had a conversation with you to look forward to,” Dean says, smiling is way through the next ten minutes of small talk about Tessa’s brother and the cursory cancer jokes that sometimes keep him up all night, wanting to throw punches at the wall because of how unfair things are. 

“You should try and drop in later when my parents are here,” Tessa says, in that soft way of hers, “they like to know that someone’s taking care of me.” 

“Damn straight,” Dean says, smiling. 

He rushes to the staff room for the last minute of his break in order to check his phone and maybe down a gallon or so of coffee, if he has time. 

He stops short when he finds Cas is waiting for him with a cup of coffee and a muffin. 

“I thought you might be busy talking to Tessa,” Castiel says mildly, pressing the coffee and the muffin into Dean’s baffled waiting hands with no acknowledgement to the fact that they pretty much hate each other, and therefore don’t thoughtfully get each other muffins and coffee on a whim. 

“Is this some kind of peace offering?” Dean asks. 

“Is it working?” 

“Well, hell,” Dean says, “I don’t often turn down blueberry muffins.” 

“It’s chocolate,” 

“Shit, Cas,” Dean says, staring at both the coffee and the muffin for a little while before turning back to Cas again. 

In the first few days after Cas had started working at the hospital, Dean had turned on his usual charm offensive (maybe a little too strongly, if Jo’s expression of amusement was anything to go by) and really made an effort with the guy. It may have had something to do with the fact that his eyes were _literally_ the same blue as some of the scrubs, but the fact that Cas was reportedly a freaking brilliant Doctor definitely bore into his decision to try and make friends (he has no time for the couple of doctors who don't give a crap, but Castiel has always clearly cared too much; he just does it differently to Dean). Cas, though, just _stared_ at him like he was a freaking zoo animal. 

A few days in, Dean decided maybe that’s just how Cas was and gave up on his crusade of friendship. Then he saw him cracking a joke with Benny and Nora, and realised that it was _just him_ that Cas didn’t seem to like. And, yeah, that kinda pissed him off. 

Dean wants to question the serious relationship uncertainty, here, but instead he just figures not to look a gift house in the mouth and enjoy the damn muffin. The coffee’s good, too. He’s not sure where in the name of hell Cas picked up his coffee preference from, but he must have gotten it from somewhere. 

“We appear to be the only ones who volunteered to work all day,” Cas says, as Dean heads for his locker and a cursory glance at his phone. There’s an obligatory happy thanksgiving text from Ellen, even though Dean _told her_ that he’d cancelled the holiday, for all intents and purposes, but Bobby has respected his wishes and not mentioned the damn day. 

“Really,” Dean deadpans, taking a long drink of coffee and not trying to think too much about why Cas, of all people, would volunteer to work the whole of Thanksgiving too. No one does that. Everyone tries to get out of it. 

“Therefore, Missouri has moved you to join me in the ICU after your break.” 

“Ah, shit,” Dean mutters, downing the rest of his coffee and dropping the empty cup in the garbage can. The ICU is either soul destroying or heart-warming, depending on your shift and the frame of mind you enter into it; the levels of critical ill patients mean fatalities are most common, but there’s also the greatest chance of improvement. It's good work to keep your mind of stuff, though, so there's some advantages for ending up there today.

“Well, better get going,” Dean finishes, scoffing the rest of his muffin and shoving his locker shut again. 

No word from Sammy, as agreed. 

“Tessa has a very fair chance of a full recovery, Dean,” Cas says, much too close for comfort (which, once or twice Dean had chalked up to his own over paranoia when it came to Cas because, crap, the man is attractive, at least until Ash _and_ Jo had both made comments on it). 

“I know,” Dean says, irritation filling him up again. He doesn’t need Castiel’s brand of patronising crap for him to be good at his job. He _knows_ Tess is taking to the chemo well and he knows the risks and side effects and the gritty truths about cancer. He doesn’t need to talk about Tessa’s cancer. He doesn’t care about her cancer, he cares about her. “I’m not a frigging idiot.” 

Cas’ eyes narrow slightly. Perhaps, in this encounter, Dean has been unfair… but why the hell should he be fair, when Cas daily undermines him and daily breathes down the back of his neck as if he’s damn incompetent? 

“Whatever,” Dean says, “let’s just go.” 

* 

“Dean,” Jo calls out, walking backwards out of ICU after a surgical consort with a pair of raised eyebrows, “you change your mind about being such a damn killjoy, Mom’s made enough turkey for you both.” 

“I told your mom not to freaking bother,” Dean calls back. 

“She’s made pie!” 

“Not interested,” Dean mutters, turning back to the stack of patient’s charts with a grimace. Sure, Ellen’s pie is freaking incredible and he categorically cannot _believe_ that he’s not going for it (neither could Bobby or Ellen, either), but he can’t do Thanksgiving this year. He can’t fake this damn festive feeling and pretend that everything’s a-okay. Maybe this year Sam is sober, but his Dad’s also dead. 

He can’t do it. 

“I wasn’t aware you had so many friends in the surgical team, Dean,” Castiel says, lightly, but his voice sounds off. 

"You just making conversation, or you genuinely interested in my life all of a sudden?” Dean asks. Normally, he wouldn’t be so damn rude to any of the Doctors… but he’s really not sure whether the hell Cas gets off and, anyway, Cas has always been an exception. “Jo’s a childhood friend. A childhood friend who needs to quit shoving festivities down my throat.” Cas smiles, slightly. “You know, I couldn’t get a damn sandwich at lunch that didn’t have turkey in it?” 

“I take it you’re opting out of thankfulness, this year.” 

“Damn straight,” Dean says, flipping through his file of paperwork, “If a guy doesn’t want turkey, there should be some other option. This is a hospital. If people want to feel down on their luck and not scrub together a freaking thankful list, then they should have that right.” 

“I was supposed to be joining my brother for dinner this evening,” Cas says, even though Dean totally hasn’t asked. He’d sort of been hoping that Cas was feeling equally as unfestive and unthankful as he was, but it seems he’s literally the only person who’s cancelled Thanksgiving this year. Only, he’s dragging his brother down too. 

“Yeah, what’s stopping you? The extra-long shift you volunteered for?” 

“My car broke down in the car park,” Castiel says, “every mechanic I called is too busy being thankful to help me out.” 

“Sounds about typical.” 

“That’s why I was so rude this morning, Dean, I apologise.” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, hotly, “and what about the last four months?” Cas looks stricken and takes a little step back which makes Dean feel so freaking guilty… but what’s he supposed to do, here? Suddenly be grateful that Cas has got his head out of his ass and wants to be best buds? “What’s wrong with your car?” 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

“I fix cars,” Dean says, hand pressed to his forehead, “If you’re gonna be stuck here all night, I can probably take a look at her after my shift. We finish at the same time, right?” 

“Yes, but –” 

“Isn’t it kinda late to be finishing work and having a thanksgiving dinner?” 

“Well,” Castiel says, picking up one of the patient’s charts and flicking though it, “I was trying to get out of it. My brother is… somewhat difficult, on occasions. I thought working late would have deterred him, but evidentially it didn’t work.” 

“Ah, over determined brothers. I have one of those.” 

“I have four.” 

“Ouch,” Dean says, disappearing off to the other end of the ward to check on Mr Turner. He’s resolutely not wondering what the rest of Cas’ brothers are doing for Thanksgiving, either, because it's none of his business and he has no reason to care. 

Dean continues wishing his patients a happy Thanksgiving and making sure their relatives get the maximum amount of time gathered around their hospital beds, even whilst every single mention of the damn holiday is making his chest tighten slightly. Goddamn. 

He had thought work was the best place to avoid thankfulness all together, because he cleans up piss and shit and vomit and does the dirty work that no one respects. His work is eclipsed by the doctors who save people’s lives and the surgeons who open people up and fix them, but everywhere the sick and the broken are shamming happiness and telling Dean about the meaningful things getting so ill has taught them. 

He feels like a selfish dick for griping when, comparatively, he has it going great… but, he’s forced himself through years of crappy Thanksgiving dinners that no one really meant and he isn’t doing it this year. 

“If one more person offers to sneak me some turkey,” Dean mutters irritably to Cas, who smiles like Dean isn’t being the biggest a-hole on the planet. He figures it’s his turn to get to act like a dick, though, considering Cas is the asshole in this relationship. Probably. 

“It’s because you give off the appearance of being wholly thankful, Dean.” 

“Well let’s thank the Lord for my acting skills,” 

“I thought we weren’t being thankful.” 

“Right,” Dean says, “yeah, strictly no thankfulness. How long till this shift ends?” 

“Two more hours,” Cas says, without checking his watch. “Are you sure you wish to hang around longer to look at my car?” 

“Dude,” Dean says, “do I look like I’m rushing home for anything tonight?” 

“I suppose,” Cas says, “if you’re sure. I doubt Gabriel and I will finish dinner before midnight,” Cas sighs, “and then it’s a forty minute drive back to my place.” 

“That sucks,” Dean agrees, even though he thinks on the grand scale of things that suck both Cas’ late night and the fact that he was forced to have a turkey sandwich for dinner don’t really register on the scale. He kind of feels like they both have a little more perspective on the matter than they’re really sharing, though, and they’re just humouring each other so they can continue to wallow in their almost-misery. 

He kinda likes it. Most people, lately, have been telling him to pull his head out of his ass and stop taking everything for granted. And he isn’t, really he isn’t. He’s _beyond_ thankful on a daily basis that he has Sam back, at long fucking last, and that Ruby is completely out of the picture, along with the drugs and the highs and Sam lying to him all the time. He misses Dad like an open wound, but he gets that it’s a fine opportunity to ponder and realise that _he’s_ alive and healthy and not addicted to anything (which is a real Winchester gold star because, Jesus, it runs in the family). 

It’s just this holiday. It just makes him think of last year, and the year before, and all those years he was hopeful and got let down. Now he’s scared of his own hope, scared to put faith in Sam and scared to believe that maybe things might be getting better, lest tomorrow he finds Sam with track marks and another junky girlfriend. 

“God, we’re selfish bastards,” Dean mutters, pressing his fingers into the back of his neck and feeling silently grateful that, at least today, Cas isn’t being a dick. He can’t imagine how lonely and depressing the shift would have been had Cas not been there to indulge in his moaning. 

* 

“My Dad taught me how to fix up cars,” Dean says, sleeves of the T-shirt he’d been wearing under his scrubs rolled up to his elbows as he inspects the mess that is Cas’ car. 

“I never understood how all the little bits fit together,” Cas says. The flashlight Cas is holding moves as Cas leans against the side of his car a little bit more, scattering the light over the car for a few seconds. He suddenly became rigid, the light steady. 

“Dude, you’re a doctor.” 

“It’s different.” 

“Sure,” Dean agrees, “the bits fit together a lot simpler and cars don’t bleed. Probably just as likely to get sued if you fuck it up, mind.” 

“Rest assured, I won’t sue you if your ruin my car,” Cas says, his voice resigned. 

“How’s that going, anyway?” 

“Shitty,” Cas mutters, and Dean’s pretty sure he’s never heard him swear before. “Sometimes, it really feels like this job is thankless.” 

“I feel you,” Dean agrees, quiet, as he pulls out the wrench from the mini tool kit he keeps at the back of the Impala, and begins unscrewing something he’s pretty sure is causing the problem. 

“There’s supposed to be something intrinsically good about saving lives, but I never feel like I’ve done enough.” 

“Cars are easier,” Dean says, through the semi-darkness that’s descended over the car parking lot in the half hour Dean has been attempting to diagnose and cure the problem with Castiel’s car which, true to word, won’t budge an inch. “You just replace the broken bits and their good to go. Here…” Dean says, “This’ll work as a temporary fix, if I just…” 

“Did you ever consider fixing cars for a living?” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “everyone expected me to.” 

“So, why did you become a nurse?” Cas asks, head titled with curiosity. He gets where Cas is coming from, too, because it never seemed like a particularly good fit until suddenly it was. When he first just went off and did it (because, by that point, there was hardly anyone left to listen to him run his plans by them), everyone had been pretty damn shocked… he just doesn’t seem like the type, straight off, until you have the context along with everything else. Which, obviously, he’s not going to hand over to Cas just because it’s Thanksgiving and he’s feeling pretty shitty about it. 

“Dr Sexy MD,” Dean says, because it’s a rough approximation of the truth without the gritty bits, “my favourite TV show.” 

Cas laughs and Dean realises he’s never heard the sound before (probably because, before today, his very presence was enough to make Cas all rigid edges and silent glares), but he quite likes it. There’s something to be said for being responsible for the thing. 

“Dean,” Cas says, “it’s _awful._ That plot with the dead girl –” 

“- ah _ha,_ ” Dean says, waving a finger in Cas’ direction with a triumphant grin, “You watch it, then.” 

“Hardly,” Cas says, frowning. 

“That’s intricate plot level stuff, Cas. Who’s your favourite character?” 

“Dean,” 

“It’s okay, Doctor,” Dean says, “your secret’s safe with me,” which may or may not be a quote from the last gripping end of season special, which he can tell Cas totally gets by the way he’s trying not to smile. “Nah, I guess I thought there was something right about trying to help people.” 

“Nevertheless, I’m definitely thankful that you happen to have the knowledge required to fix my car.” 

“Dude, we’re not being thankful today,” Dean says, “we’re wallowing in our selfish self-pity." He falls into the front seat of Cas’ car, and turns the key experimentally. The engine splutters to life, which Dean takes as a job well done. “You’ll really need to get it fixed up properly,” Dean says, “but it’ll get you to your turkey dinner.” 

“Thank you, Dean.” 

“Dude!” 

Castiel smiles, slightly, before switching off the flashlight and handing it back to Dean with a slightly morose expression. 

“I fear we may have gotten off to a bad start, Dean,” Castiel continues, “maybe we could…” 

“Dean Winchester,” Dean says, holding out his right hand for Cas to shake. 

Cas’ hand is warm and heavy in his for the few seconds the handshake lasts, and Dean remembers all over again that this is _Cas_ who’s stupidly attractive and moody and arrogant and a bit of a dick all at once. Cas, who seems to be the only other person in the whole hospital who watches Dr Sexy. He has an unsaleable urge just to refuse to let go of Cas’ hand, but he’s not quite that dumb. 

“Castiel Milton,” Cas says in that deep voice of his, and Dean thinks he’s possible a little bit screwed. 

* 

When he gets back in, Sam is laid out on the couch watching some cooking program (about how to make the perfect turkey roast, which seems a little bit late all things considered). 

“I thought you were supposed to have your own apartment, bitch.” 

“Jerk,” Sam says, half asleep, “my flatmate’s having his brother over for Thanksgiving dinner. The smoke alarm kept going off and I was trying to get some work done.” 

“Looks like it,” Dean snorts, migrating over to the fridge to fetch himself a beer. 

“I got you a turkey burger,” Sam says, “on the table.” 

“Thanks,” Dean says, picking up the burger and feeling something slightly warm dislodge in his chest, despite himself. Sam’s long limbs are still hanging over the edges of his sofa, without moving, and Dean’s pretty sure his eyes are glued shut… but, hey, the kid’s killing himself trying to get his degree right, this time, so Dean’s not about to nag him for being tired. 

“I thought we weren’t doing that this year,” Sam mutters from the direction of the sofa. 

“Smart ass.” 

“How was work?” 

“Fine, Sammy, fine,” Dean says, “quit hogging my sofa and move up, Sasquatch.” 

“Urgh,” Sam complains, but pulls himself upright to fall into the seat next him, “Ellen bought round some pie.” 

“That woman is a saint.” 

“We’re okay, right Dean?” Sam asks, his puppy eyes coming out as he blinks up at him. For the longest time, Sam’s cheeks were hollowed out, skin pale, thinner than should be possible. He looks good (haircut aside, because _really_ ) and, right this second, it’s kind of hard to remember that Sam _broke_ him. 

For now, nothing feels all that broken. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, falling into the sofa and taking a bite of his turkey burger, “we’re fine.”


	2. Christmas Toilet roll and other crap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas is cancelled.

Christmas needs to get out of his face. 

Seriously, the shops started chucking this stuff at him halfway through September (and when did Christmas decorations wind up displayed alongside Halloween decorations, anyway?), and now it’s inescapable. There’s Christmas toilet roll, he’s seen so many pictures of Santa he’s engrained on his eyeballs and he can’t even get a damn coffee without someone putting a cinnamon stick in it and calling it a Christmas Special. Every program on TV involves someone in a Santa hat and now some bright spark has sprung up tinsel in the few places in the hospital it’s considered sanitary. There’s even a Christmas tree in freaking the break room. 

He would like to set fire to it, but he doesn’t think it’s worth losing his job over some overly-festive inspired hatred of plastic plants. 

The last few weeks of work have been awful, largely because his semi-truce with Cas tumbled approximately seventy hours after it was formed, when Cas found him helping Tessa’s boyfriend surprise her with a stupidly large bouquet of flowers. So, yeah, maybe it _looked_ like Dean was just randomly stood outside Tessa’s room holding some freaking roses, which may have seemed a tad inappropriate, but once the actual cause of the whole unfortunate stream of events, it would have been nice to have Cas back off instead of lay into him about prioritising patients and some shit that barely made sense, anyway. The whole thing resulted in Dean taking his break outside to have a smoke, which he hadn’t done for a while but _hey,_ it was nearly freaking Christmas. Apparently, Cas also thought he had a right to bitch at Dean about smoking, too, which was so much of a joke that he’d suggested him putting it in a cracker and shoving it up his ass. 

(Jo had later assured him that this was actually pretty funny, even if Cas didn’t exactly appreciate the joke). Whatever. 

Sam drove out to spend Christmas with his girlfriend Jess this morning, which was kinda stupidly serious for the amount of time they’ve been together and was completely Dean‘s fault. If he hadn’t ostentatiously told Sam, right after he heard the first Christmas song being played in Walmart in October, that they were not doing Christmas this year, then Sam probably wouldn’t have got his fast track ticket to meeting the parents. 

Jess was nice. He’d met her a bunch of times and he respected the fact that, rather than try and talk Dean out of cancelling Christmas, she just accepted it and asked if Sam was required to skip it too. Course, then he’d asked Sam whether or not he’d told her the truth ( _‘of course, Dean, I’m not you’_ ) which led to a big argument Dean didn’t want to go over, in even in his head, and Dean angrily telling him that of course he wasn’t punishing Sam by forcing him to sit at home and opt out of the festivities, too, even though there was something significantly more depressing about skipping Christmas alone ( _‘but you get me a present, Sam, and I’ll punch you in the damn face’_ ). 

And now, course, he’s got to deal with a mopey Sam calling him from a service station. 

“Did Jo tell you when my break was?” Dean demands, slamming open his locker to find that Benny is the third person today to ignore his no present rule. He hasn’t wrapped it, obviously knowing that Dean just categorically wouldn’t open it, but he’s shoved five rolls of reindeer patterned toilet roll in his locker. 

“Yes, Dean,” Sam says, sounding half frustrated and half sad, “look, can’t you just drive out to Jess’ after work? Her parents say you’re more than welcome.” 

“No,” Dean says, gruffly, as one of the rolls of toilet roll falls out of his locker and hits him in the face. It unravels over his shoulder, spinning down onto the floor and out of reach. Damn. 

“Why?” 

Yeah, Sam’s definitely been crying. 

“For one, I finish at nine. By the time I drove out there, it’d be freaking Boxing Day, Sammy. Secondly, I told you months ago I don’t want _anything_ to do with this god damn holiday, okay? Why’s everyone gotta be so damn persistent about it?” 

“Because it’s Christmas,” 

“That’s a shitty argument,” Dean says, losing his battle with the freaking reindeer toilet roll due to the levels of aggression he’s putting into trying to roll it up again. “I’m fine, Sam.” 

“Have you called Ben?” 

“No,” Dean says, slamming a fist against next door’s locker. Another toilet roll falls out. 

“You know he’d want to hear from you,” Sam says, voice coaxing and soft and all the things Dean doesn’t want to listen to, right now. 

“Well Lisa sure as hell doesn’t,” Dean counters, “this isn’t damn Love Actually, Sam. I’m not wasting my break talking about my feelings.” 

“So you have feelings, then, about Christmas? Only, you’ve refused to talk about it, so I don’t know.” 

“Sam,” Dean spits, throwing the toilet roll that won’t roll up at the wall because, damn, the whole point of avoiding today is to put off some of these conversations for as long as possible, “last Christmas, I got a ten minute phone call from you from rehab. Dad did a freaking runner, right before we were supposed to exchange gifts. And then Lisa told me that if I didn’t get my head out of my ass and stop working so damn much, we were done.” 

Sam spent the ten minutes on the phone yelling at Dean about all the shitty Christmases they’d had growing up and refusing to talk to Dad, because they were trying to wean him off the drugs and he was crashing and nasty. He’d known full well that his Dad was driving drunk down the highway somewhere in Dean’s car, and it wasn’t exactly a festive highlight. At that point, he’d still been keeping up the lie to Lisa that everything in his life was a-okay (no druggie brother or drunk, partially absentee-father), so it just about figured that she was pissed about him working a half shift on Christmas Day. He’d wound up sitting out on Lisa’s porch wondering why the hell he even bothered. 

“And this year,” Dean says, “Dad’s dead and, let’s be honest about this Sam, that’s the only reason you’re not high right now. If you want to hop aboard the festive train and pretend that this year hasn’t sucked ass, you feel free. But, either way, _my Christmas_ is going to involve getting good and drunk.” 

Someone clears their throat behind him. Dean turns around, still tangled up in reindeer toilet roll, to find him facing down _Castiel_ of all people. 

“I hope you’re meaning _after_ your shift,” Cas says, mildly. 

“Sam, I’ve got to go –” 

“– Dean,” Sam says, and he’s really crying now. Shit. 

“– Sammy, I’ll call you after work. Don’t do anything stupid.” 

“Dean, I’m not going to, I … Dean, will you just –” 

_“Bye,”_ Dean says, firmly, and hangs up. Cas is still stood in the doorway to the break room in that stupid lab coat, and he’s like ninety percent sure that Cas heard most of that conversation. At least the bit about his high brother and his dead father, at any rate, which is plenty enough to be going alone with. _“What?”_

“Is there room for another in your drinking plans?” Cas asks. 

“Sorry?” 

“Getting ‘good and drunk’ sounds very appealing,” Cas says, and Dean’s staring at him because _what, sorry?_ “Providing, of course, you do mean after your shift.” 

“Well, shit Cas,” Dean says, blind sighted, “spending Christmas day drinking with a guy you spend most of your time yelling at is only marginally less depressing than drinking alone.” 

“But it is… marginally less depressing,” 

“Well, no where’s going to be open,” Dean hedges, struggling to find any decent kind of excuse because, well that’s pretty logical. He’d spent the past few months counting on the fact that Sam would be being miserably and not thinking about Christmas, too, but now Sam has run off to his bright, happy future with Jess (and isn’t that what he always does? Right up to the point where it’s not so bright and happy?) and he’s completely alone in his crusade of misery. 

“I have an apartment.” 

Cas did, on the whole, make Thanksgiving about a hundred times more bearable than it could have been. 

“I don’t think you’ll have enough alcohol,” Dean says, “Anyway, I don’t trust you not to have a Christmas tree dying in some corner of the room.” 

“My brother did put tinsel above my television,” Cas admits, as if this is some grave sin, “but that seems about on a level with your, ah, reindeer toilet roll.” 

“Don’t,” Dean says, picking up the ball (without bothering to roll it up, this time) and throwing it aggressively in the direction of the bin, “if a guy says no presents, how hard is that to follow through on? It’s pretty damn easy just not to buy dumb crap like this.” 

He pauses for a moment and looks at Cas, finding himself already kind of irritated that the man can be so hot and cold, and so freaking attractive whilst being such a pain in the neck. He’s a frustrating enigma of coolness and being overly friendly and zero social skills, but he gets under skin so easily. He’s like a damn catheter, pumping whatever mood Cas happens to be in straight into his bloodstream. 

“You can come drink at mine, if you want,” Dean settles on, finally without really being sure why. “I have the complete Dr Sexy box set, and we both know you’re a big fan.” 

Cas smiles. 

* 

As it turns out, he and Cas are once again the only ones who volunteered to work the full Christmas day (Missouri gave him a look like she wanted to give him Christmas off just to spite him, but the hospital needs to be fully functioning despite the earth shattering nature of Christmas, so he wound up working all day as requested), which means the rest of the day is mostly full of people cheerfully working half shifts before going home to celebrate Christmas with their family. 

That, or moodily working their unrequested full day shift, knowing that at least they get the whole of Boxing Day off tomorrow; Missouri’s policy. 

“Dean,” Jo says, finding him on his ward with her coat and scarf already on, “you sure you don’t want that present I got you?” 

“Jo,” Dean sighs, frustration mixing with the desire to cry. He loves Jo, he does. She’s like a sister and Ellen has always been like a mother to him, but the women are damn interfering. At least Bobby, who grouched and got mad and told Dean he was an idjit, and not to bother him when he wound up lonely and depressed (which of course, he didn’t mean for a second), dropped it and let him get on with it. “I said no.” 

“Alright, Winchester, I got it,” Jo says, reaching forward to kiss his cheek and squeeze his shoulder for a second. “Have a truly miserable Christmas. I’ll have a drink for your Dad for you.” 

“Have several,” Dean comments, turning away to flick through a pile of patient’s records with a grimace, “in fact, drink everything.” 

“Play nice, Dean. Call if you need to.” 

“I’m fine, Jo, leave it.” 

“And if you drunk dial Lisa, I’ll bust your ass.” 

“I’d like to see you try, Joanna Beth,” Dean mutters back, just because he knows full well that Jo can and would happily mess him up good and proper, should sufficient reason arise. Jo was bad ass and awesome long before she became a surgeon, but he thinks cutting people open and fixing their insides has made even more awesome; he’s learnt, over the last decade of his life, that people’s insides are messed up in all kinds of ways. Being able to fix some of that, even the shallower, physical problems, is pretty damn impressive. 

“That’s another thing about Christmas,” Dean says to Cas, once he’s watched Jo leave, “I’m pretty sure no one ever got soppy about their exes at Christmas until all those soppy Christmas songs told them too.” 

“I’ll refrain from quoting Wham, then.” Cas says, picking up a chart and making to head towards one of the patient’s beds. Dean’s pretty much heading down the ward, anyway, and finds himself unconsciously falling into step with him. 

“Like, what other song is dragged out every year to be replayed to death?” 

“Thriller?” Castiel suggests. 

“Oh god,” Dean mutters, pausing at mouth of the corridor to shake his head. He mostly wants to hate all kind of celebration, because they all mark the painful first-year-without which mark the first of the rest of his life stretching on _without,_ but it’s kinda hard to muster up any hatred of Halloween. 

“Deano,” Ash says, sidling over from a conversation with Garth to slap him in the shoulder, “I am afraid we have a situation vis a vis the mistletoe.” He jerks a thumb upwards, to the mistletoe that some shit eater has stuck up on the ceiling. Probably Garth. It’s always Garth. 

“Are you serious?” Dean asks, glancing at Cas for a second because _awkward_. “This is a hospital.” 

Garth has his stupid puppet on one of his hands, which means he’s probably just been telling some six year old that they have cancer (and he does not understand how Garth can do it and still pull out a smile) or that they’re sick in a way that they won’t get better from. “Don’t kill Christmas, Dean,” Garth says, via the puppet. 

Today, the puppet also has a Christmas hat pinned on top of it’s head. Garth probably made it himself. He’s that sort of guy. 

Dean makes a grab for the puppet, because it’s marginally better than thinking about mistletoe and Castiel and the fact that they’re about to sort of spend a second major holiday together, even though they spend half their time snapping at each other. 

* 

Dean’s pretty sure that Cas isn’t actually going to come to his apartment to get drunk together on Christmas Day. It was probably some throw away comment that he didn’t really mean. He’s probably going to be spending the evening with any one of his numerous brothers and not think about Dean, alone in his apartment, once. That’s the logical thing to happen, anyway, because they’re not even friends. 

Still, he’s leant against the side of the Impala smoking, just to see if Cas is actually going to make good on their plans. 

Christmas has gotten under his skin, exactly like Bobby said it would, and he needs a distraction from all the vaguely happy years with Sam and Dad (and the few with his mother, too). There were tense arguments that were occasionally put aside for the day and occasionally blew up, and there were really shitty Christmases like last one… but there were a few highlights, in amongst the gloom. The problem is, that’s what life is like; there’s a bunch of crap stuff and a bunch of good stuff, and he doesn’t see why he has to be so fixated on remember particular Christmases. 

It’s just Christmas. Why does it have to be so important? 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, appearing at the front of his car. He’s swapped his white lab coat for this weird tan trench coat that Dean’s pretty sure he’s seen Cas wear before, but he still manages to make it look good. If in a dorky, very bible school kind of way. 

He’s a little bit screwed, really, because trench coats just shouldn’t be attractive. Especially not guys trench coats to other guys who are pretty much straight, but for a few choice exceptions. 

Whatever. 

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says, smiling a bit because he’s actually pretty glad that Cas isn’t going home to his loving family, even if it makes him a selfish dick. “Get in.” 

Cas obliges in silence and is very particular about his seat belt, which sort of throws Dean for a minute before he remembers that Cas has seen the results of as many car accidents as he has. It’s probable he didn’t lose a father to a car accident eleven months ago, but knowing how many people wind up bleeding out on the pavements is probably enough. 

A drunk driver and a drugged driver find each other on the highway, neither survives. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but Dean’s living out the punch line and it’s not all that funny. He’s pretty glad they found each other, because if John Winchester had taken out someone sober he’s not sure he could live with the guilt. There are silver linings, too, because the fact that their father’s death was the result of a mixture of the influence of alcohol and the influence of drugs was just about enough to scare Sam into taking rehab seriously. 

“I live a couple of blocks away,” Dean says, to fill in the empty space, “so, you’re not going to see your brother for Christmas?” 

“He’s visiting our parents,” Cas says, without further elaboration, “and your brother is…?” 

“Visiting his girlfriend and her family,” Dean says. He sort of wants to ask whether or not Cas got an invite to the big family Christmas, but then Cas could ask the same question back. 

He leaves it and starts bitching about what a tax Christmas lights are on the environment, as if he doesn’t drive a car which eats gas by the galleon and actually gives a shit about that sort of thing. 

* 

“– and Carol singers,” Dean says, somewhere between his third drink and his forth, “those little shits make more money per hour than I do. Not you, hotshot Doctor,” 

The whole thing started off pretty freaking awkward, but now Dean’s put Dr Sexy on for background noise and they’ve drank enough alcohol that it’s easy to pretend that it’s not awkward, the whole thing has become a lot more pleasant. Actually, he’s struck by the fact that he’s actually having a really good time wallowing in his own misery, which is a pretty new phenomenon. 

“Yes,” Cas agrees, “maybe in another ten years I’ll be able to pay back my semi-estranged parents for putting me through medical school.” 

Dean laughs because the whole thing is just awful and true. 

There’s something entirely too entertaining in indulging in talking about all the things that are wrong with life even though it’s Christmas. His reflex reaction to people shoving messages of good cheer and peace-among-men down his throat is to remember that good people die young, and anyone can get cancer, and some people can’t be saved. It’s nice to have someone else acknowledge that there’s something fucked about the way the world works. 

You get into a world of debt just to save people lives, and open yourself off for being sued in the process. It’s a mad world. 

“Oh, man, I put Sammy through the first couple of years at Stanford,” Dean grimaces, “you gotta win the lottery to fulfil your super smart potential, I swear.” 

“Or perhaps engage in a lot of carol singing,” Cas says, smiling slightly. 

“Okay, so,” Dean says, pouring them both another shot of cheap vodka, because it’s just that kind of night, “worst Christmas?” 

“It’s a tie,” Cas says, considering his shot, “the year my father left us for his pregnant girlfriend a week before Christmas and the year my youngest brother accidentally outed me as gay, and I was chucked out.” 

“Ouch,” Dean says, his brain working double time in an attempt to process this new information. Shitty father, unaccepting family, gay… his brain sticks on the gay thing for a little bit too long. It’s one thing have a weird slightly gay crush on Cas, which he admitted to himself a long time ago, but it’s another thing entirely when Cas is sat on his couch, downing a shot of vodka, and _gay._ As in, not some off limits vague fantasy, but an almost viable possibility. 

“None of it stuck,” Cas says, “Father came back and my mother turned up on my doorstep in tears several months later. Still, I refuse to join them on Christmas as a matter of principle.” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, mulling it over, “Can’t really blame you. I dunno what my father would have done if he knew I…” Dean stops, because he doesn’t even know how the rest of that sentence goes. Sorting out the whole sexuality thing hasn’t every really cropped up on his radar, just because he’s had other things to be dealing with, but _really_ he doesn’t even know. 

He’s not sure if he cares or not, either. 

“Anyway,” Dean says, interrupting himself just to change the subject, “my worst Christmas is probably a tie, too. Between two years after Sam went to Stanford and last year.” 

“What happened?” 

“Ah,” Dean says, pausing to work out which details to filter out, “Sam and Dad had this big argument, so Sam refuses to come home from Stanford. So I drove us halfway up to California till Dad told me why they’d been arguing, in the first place,” Cas doesn’t prompt him, so he’s sure that he could skip on the details if he really want to, but Cas was honest. “Dad goes and tells me that he found a bunch of… well, needles and crap in Sam’s room last time he visited. Sam told him it was all Ruby’s, his at the time junkie girlfriend. And, well, I think you got most of the story of last year eavesdropping earlier.” 

“I apologise,” 

Honestly, Dean probably shouldn’t have been talking about it in the break room anyway. 

“Whatever,” Dean says, “so you’ve had, what, twenty five Christmases? How’s this one ranking?” 

“It’s probably in my top ten, 

“Out of…?” Dean asks, because, well… this whole drinking event pretty much happened because he was curious. Cas stares at him for a moment, all blue eyes and serious expression, as if he’s seriously trying to work out where Dean’s going with this one. 

“Thirty two,” Cas says, pouring himself another drink. “Yourself?” 

“Thirty four,” Dean says, “bottom fifteen.” 

“Any other night,” Cas begins, “going home and having an early night wouldn’t have bothered me.” 

“Right,” Dean agrees, “but that’s like, the curse of Christmas. It’s like… Christmas puts so much pressure on everyone to be having a good time, so whenever your life hasn’t just fallen off a Hallmark card it winds up making everyone feel shitty. And everyone’s so aware of the fact that they’re supposed to be having a really good time, that they get stressed out about it. I just think…” Dean trails off, distracted by the television. 

It’s the episode of Dr Sexy where Dr Sexy himself has a kind of a gay crisis with this hot male nurse, and it’s just got to the bit where Dr Sexy has realised that the hot male nurse is openly gay and Dr Sexy doesn’t really know what to do about that. It’s one of his favourite episodes, despite the fact that there were complaints from all angles about just about everything. Some people seemed to think that Dr Sexy having a sexuality crisis undermined the guy’s sheer sexy manliness, but Dean always thought that was dumb because it was the _cowboy boots_ that made Dr Sexy sexy, not the number of woman he charmed. Other people were annoyed that the nurse was portrayed as preying on the supposedly straight guy, even though he’s pretty sure that didn’t happen either; they just happened to stand too close to each other all the time, and have inappropriate eye sex over cancer patients and generally just had a _chemistry_ thing (that later translated into them having a quickie in the lift, which tended to happen a lot in Dr Sexy). 

Cas is giving him a _did you just get distracted from a somewhat profound thought by Dr Sexy_ look, but Dean kinda feels like he’s having an epiphany here. 

People don’t just invite themselves over to slightly hostile colleague’s apartments on Christmas Day for no reason, whether or not they’re having a shitty Christmas. It’s just not done. You sit at home alone and you deal, because Christmas operates on compounding whatever emotion you’re feeling and magnifying it to stupid degrees. But, they have like… like a thing where the lose their temper at each other and don’t get on very well, but then Cas apologises and Dean actually really likes the guy, even though he frustrates him. 

And none of it makes a lick of sense. 

Cas is still staring at him. 

Dean finishes his vodka and coke and sets it down on the floor, not breaking eye contact (do they ever, anyway?). 

Then he pretty much decides to fuck it, because it’s Christmas and that seems to be a decent excuse for everything else, so why not just lean forward and kiss Cas like that’s a perfectly normal thing to do? Technically, they were like awkwardly stood under a sprig of inconveniently placed mistletoe earlier, so if Cas completely rejects him he can brush off the awkward and say he was squaring a mistletoe debt. No big deal. 

Except, instead of completely rejecting him Cas’ fingers tangle up in Dean’s shirt, pulling him closer, and bringing their lips back together in a mesh of heat and need Dean’s pretty sure he was expecting. 

And Christmas gets slightly better after that.


	3. Boxers Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boxing day is the worst.

His phone is ringing. 

He’s been awake for at least fifteen minutes, but he’s been in a strict state of denial in regard to those minutes. He’s definitely not hungover enough to warrant what happened last night, so he’s taking the mature route and pretending that none of it happened. It’s been working pretty well up to this point. 

It’s Boxing Day, which means that _last night,_ on Christmas Day, he managed to sleep with a colleague he’s not even sure he likes (it’s hard to detangle, that one), despite all good intentions about being mature and not sleeping with any of the hot nurses/Doctors and inevitably messing things up. That’s without even considering the fact that Cas is definitely, a hundred percent a man and he’s quite possible just compounded the sexuality crisis he’s decidedly not been having into one not-really-that-drunk-encounter. On Christmas Day. 

And he never called Sammy back. 

“Sam,” Dean mutters, groping around on his bedside table to find the source of the noise and sitting up slightly. Cas, who’d evidentially not been awake having a sexuality crisis (probably because the guy’s actually gay, but there’s a side point for another day), makes a sleepy, disgruntled noise that Dean’s completely _not_ labelling as adorable. “Morning, Sammy,” Dean says into the phone, trying his best to aim for cheerful and getting somewhere around that vicinity. 

“It’s one PM,” Sam deadpans. 

“Uh, well,” Dean hedges, because that makes sense given the late shift at work and then the food and the drinking and all the sex, “it’s my day off, so…lie in.” 

“Dean,” Cas mutters, “Shut up.” 

“Are you _with_ someone?” Sam demands. 

Cas looks very much like he’s about to tell Sam to shut up too, which is Dean’s excuse for rolling over to Cas’ side of the bed (and maybe he’s effectively straddling him but, hey, who’s keeping a record) and slamming a hand over his mouth. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, staring down a pair of very blue eyes. “Yeah, pretty much.” 

“Who?” 

“Uh…Cas,” 

He’s not really sure why he’s given Sam a straight answer, really he’s not, because nothing good can come of this conversation. He thinks it’s because the guilt about not calling Sam back and leaving him hanging has forced him into telling the truth. That and his brain is too friend to come up with some lie to fob him off with. Plus, Cas could totally be short for a number of girls names. Not a problem. 

“You mean that Doctor guy you hate?” 

Cas raises his eyebrows further. Dean half wants to laugh, because of all the ways to make this awkward…. And why does his brother have to actually listen to him when he talks? It’s really inconvenient right about now. “I wouldn’t say hate?” Dean says, hopefully. Cas curls his hands around Dean’s hips, which is pretty distracting actually, and Dean feels his breath hitch slightly. He’d forgotten about the bit where they were both quite naked. 

“Dean, are you missing the bit where he’s _a guy?_ ” 

Ah, shit. 

“Um,” Dean mutters, “look, I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.” 

“Obviously, you’ve been busy,” 

“Saaam,” Dean complains, “I just… look, we’ll talk when you’re home. It’s really not a good time.” 

“It’s _never_ a good time,” Sam snaps, “you can’t put off talking about Dad forever.” Dean sits up a bit more, removing the hand from over Cas’ mouth to frown into the receiver for a few moments. He can put off talking about Dad. He can put up talking about it for as long as he wants. That’s his prerogative. “I _miss_ him, Dean,” Sam says and, fuck it all, Sam’s teary again, “I miss him and I _need_ to talk about him,” 

Cas is using his free mouth to kiss Dean’s neck and it’s really not context appropriate. 

“I really can’t do this now,” Dean says, “Cas is here and I…” 

“Fine,” Sam says, “I’m setting off in half an hour. See you later.” 

“Damn it, Sammy,” Dean mutters, dropping the phone onto the bed, “Boxing Day is the worst. Boxing Day is worse than Christmas.” 

Cas is pressing a hot line of kisses across Dean’s shoulder blade, and it’s uncurling this heady warmth somewhere in his gut; Cas is all muscles and stares and skin. One night stands and equivalents (which, for all intents and purposes, is what this is… even though it seems to have dragged out and on into the following morning which, really, is fine by Dean) aren’t supposed to make you feel this good for this length of time. The next morning is supposed to be all hangover and regret and awkward goodbyes, but Cas didn’t appear to get the memo. Instead, it feels equally as euphoric and hot and brilliant as it did last night. 

“Undoubtedly,” Cas agrees, “the fallout from yesterday’s argument, the hangover and crap leftovers sandwiches. Regardless,” Cas breathes into the skin beneath Dean’s earlobe, “this Boxing Day has already made my top ten.” 

“Just so you know,” Dean grins, pulling Cas forward to actually meet his lips, this time. “I’m aiming for top five.” 

* 

Dean’s not really sure he wound up out for (a very late) lunch with Cas, right in the heart of the Boxing Day sales rush, when all he’d really intended by kissing Cas again this morning was to put off the inevitable moment when he had to face Christmas for a little bit longer. 

He’d wanted to stay hauled up in his bedroom in their boxers all day, because the second he retreated for the shower he started having a bit of a mini freak out and then had take a minute just to remind himself to keep breathing… but it was nearly 3PM and he didn’t really have any food, and he didn’t think Sam would be very impressed if he got back from Jess’ to find Dean drinking coffee in bed with a hot male doctor. 

Actually, he’d probably be very impressed with Dean’s audacity, but that would be about it. So, they’re eating burgers and, somehow, wound up flipping the whole conversation and talking about _best Christmases._

“Honestly,” Cas says, “most of them weren’t awful. I get along much better with my brother’s individually, but when we’re all together and forced to sit around playing monopoly it usually gets ugly. My best was the year after I left for college, when I’d had space to breathe away from them.” 

“Huh,” Dean says, “Mine was the year after Sam left for Stanford, actually. Well, okay, don’t tell Sammy this, because he wasn’t really there… but, my actual favourite was the Christmas I was three. Anyway, yeah, Sammy coming home for Christmas was the best thing ever.” 

Dad had traded in the usual shitty mote they’d been staying in and actually managed to score a flat for a couple of months. He remember Sam’s expression as Dean pulled up in front of a legitimate apartment block, and the way Dad and Sam just talked instead of circling round each other all tense and poised for an argument. 

“What happened between that year and the next?” Cas asks, looking up at him over his mostly finished burger with his really, really blue eyes. But that’s the killer question, isn’t it? Because if he can go from the best Christmas ever to the worst in three hundred and sixty five days, then why can’t it happen all over again? 

“You want me to talk about this?” Dean asks, staring at him. 

“It’s Christmas,” Cas shrugs, “dragging up the past is practically a requirement.” 

“Well, it’s kind of a long story.” 

“Do I look like I’m rushing home for anything tonight?” Cas asks, and it’s a direct quote from Thanksgiving, which makes Dean once again aware of how freaking ridiculous the whole thing is. Still, he’s been thinking about the whole thing none stop since the beginning of November and… 

Dean sucks in a deep breath and glances at his burger. 

“So, it always comes back to Mom. There was this fire in Sam’s nursery and… well. We didn’t have anyone else, so growing up Dad was always struggling to juggle looking after us and earning money. We moved around a lot, running away from ghosts and unpaid motel bills, and… when I was old enough, Dad sometimes left to get some work and some money sorted for us. Sam just wanted to settle down in a proper house and stay at school for longer than six months, but _we couldn’t_. Sam runs off to Stanford, which I fund because Dad _can’t_ and _won’t,_ and things were finally settled and I thought maybe it could work, until it suddenly didn’t.” 

He hasn’t talked about this for a while. 

“Dad… he just wanted what was best for us, always, but Sammy didn’t like his brand of what was best for him. They got into some stupid cycle of arguing. I don’t even know who was right anymore,” Dean says, running through the arguments in his head. Sometimes he blames Dad and sometimes he blames Sam and almost always he blames himself. “It’s not that clear cut, I guess. So Dad drank more and that set Sam off more, till Sam rewrote the whole thing into this tragedy that he needed to run from. From us. There was a bad argument and no one spoke for a good six months, which I guess is when Sam found the drugs. I don’t know.” 

“And then?” 

“Then,” Dean says, dragging the words from somewhere in his gut with effort. This is the bit of the story that he doesn’t like. None of its exactly wonderful, but it was manageable. “I… well, Sam was my priority.” John Winchester had engrained that one into his skull at some point during their childhood. So there wasn’t any question, really, he hadn’t had any other option. 

“I went to California. Dad didn’t do so well being alone. I went back to Kansas. Somewhere in the midst of trying to pull them both out, they both disappeared. Moved in with a family friend back here till I got my nursing job. Dad turned up. Sam appeared sometimes for money and shit, but he stayed away after I… uh, punched him the face. Got a call from Sam’s druggie girlfriend about three years ago, out of the blue, saying they’d finally thought over that rehab thing. I still had the money, so I got that set up but it wasn’t really going that well. Ruby ditched out. Pretty sure Sam was headed for the exit too, but then Dad drank a bit too much whiskey and crashed into a girl that’d had a little bit too much coke.” Dean glances down at his coffee, feeling his heart twisting slightly in the vicinity of his chest, “both died on impact. Thank fuck no one else was hurt.” 

“And that snapped Sam out of it?” 

“Seems like it,” Dean says, “he was clean in a month. Now he only drinks on special occasions, has a nice school teacher girlfriend and is back studying again. He’s doing great.” 

Which begs the question as to why he’s avoiding the festivities like the plague…but he just can’t. He’s spent the year feeling just about every single fucking thing, and now he’s emotions are all stretched out and saturated. He knows Christmas would be full of talking about Dad like he was perfect, talking about how Sam was great Sam’s life was, and about Dean’s life was just carrying on like he always did. He can’t do it. 

“I can’t just pretend like none of it ever happened for some precious holiday,” Dean says, balling his hand into a fist. “You get it, right? That’s why you skipped out on Christmas too?” 

“Yes,” Cas agrees, “I am unwilling to sit through Christmas dinner knowing the majority of my family would prefer to change who I am to make them feel more comfortable.” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, thinking that maybe Cas has a much better reason to skip Christmas than he does. And that’s when Ben rings. “You mind…?” Dean asks, turning the phone over in his hand and bringing up to his ear. His chest hurts. 

Ben wants to tell him about Christmas and his presents and about how he misses him and he doesn’t like Lisa’s new boyfriend, because he’s not as cool as Dean is. It’s a little bit like the kid shoving a knife in a wound that hasn’t really healed yet, but he’s not going to begrudge Ben anything for as long he still exist in his peripheries. One day, the new boyfriend is going to stick and he’ll be out the picture. He always knew that. 

“Ben, I gotta… I gotta go, okay?” Dean says, the words dislodging themselves from somewhere deep and a bit painful. “You tell your Mom Merry Christmas,” 

“She says to tell you she’s in the shower,” Ben says, “but she just doesn’t want to talk to you.” 

“Right,” Dean says, looking up to find that Cas is still watching him, “I’ll see you soon, Ben.” 

“You always say that,” Ben says, “bye, Dean.” 

Dean hangs up feeling shitty, which his default setting for stuff that includes Ben these days, and drops his phone onto the table with a sort of irritated sigh. 

“Lisa’s kid,” Dean mutters by way of explanation, his fingers distractedly rubbing the back of his neck. A lot has changed this year. Some of it has been good, he supposes, and he’d actually kinda enjoyed this day with Cas until Ben had called and stirred all of that up. “You need to get back?” Dean asks, “I could… er… could probably do with picking up a few things.” 

If Cas knows he’s stalling the leaving moment for a bit longer than he doesn’t mention it, which Dean’s pretty damn grateful for. Instead, he follows Dean into a jam packed department store with no objection, like they’d always planned that they were going to have a lot of sex then do lunch and go shopping. 

He winds up buying everyone presents without really meaning to; a bunch of geeky books for Sam, a shitty Mistletoe hat saying ‘kiss me it’s Christmas’ for Benny, some whiskey for Bobby and a box of fancy chocolates for Ellen. He didn’t really mean to, exactly, but he saw the hat… and then he remembered why it was fun to buy people presents in the first place, and Cas was there listening to him go on about how it’s all cheaper after Christmas, anyway, like Dean is actually making any sense. 

“Are you going to wrap them up?” Cas asks, and then they take a detour to the section full of discounted Christmas wrapping paper and Dean buys two rolls of purple paper quoting Christmas carols because it happens to be the nearest. 

“Where am I dropping you off?” Dean asks, when he’s dragged it out for as long as possible and there’s no way to keep the day going on any longer. 

“The hospital,” Cas says, “I left my car there.” 

Dean’s brain short circuits for a moment as he tries to work out what Cas’ originally plan for getting home was… it wasn’t like there were a lot of cabs available on Christmas Day and they never really mentioned it. It’s a good job they slept together, all practical concerns considered. 

“Okay,” Dean says, “I’ll pick up that damn toilet roll, too. I’m sure Jo will get a kick out of it. Look,” Dean says, the words dragging from somewhere in his chest because he really doesn’t know what to say. It’s probably just a case of right time, right place, but Cas has managed to reroute his thought processes just by bringing up shitty Christmases and getting him to talk about Sam. He’s pretty sure that if it wasn’t for Cas, he might still be drunk right now. Somehow, Cas made the whole thing seem okay. “Thanks, Cas, I… I needed today.” 

Cas smiles and doesn’t say anything. 

* 

Dean calls Sam from the hospital car park. 

“You weren’t home,” Sam says, bitchface audible, “so I went to Ellen’s.” 

“Good,” Dean says, “I’m heading over now.” 

“You said you weren’t setting foot in there till Ellen took down the Christmas tree,” 

“Yeah, Sam, I know what I said. Look, I’ll be there in five.” 

“Where are you?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says, because he doesn’t really want to get into the bit where he spent the rest of the day with his gay crisis when he should have been talking to Sam about his feelings. “Tell Ellen I’m coming.” 

“Bobby says not to bother if you’ve still got that sick up your ass,” 

“I have a bag of presents and I’ll be there in five,” Dean says, hanging up before he can hear Sam’s girly ass reply. He’s tempted to stay in the car and finish both the whiskey and the fancy chocolates, but he just went through the effort of half-heartedly wrapping them all up. 

He’s not sure when he gave up giving up Christmas. 

When he pulls up to the Roadhouse, Sam is waiting for him outside. He’s all too long limbs and too long hair, and Dean’s suddenly thinking about the shitty years they weren’t in contact and how honestly glad he is that, right now, he has Sam. Even if Sam is definitely mad at him (rightly so) and, sometimes, when he looks at his brother he sees a drug addict and sometimes he sees a five year old crying about not having a Mom… Sam’s here and healthy and happy. 

“Hey, Sam,” Dean says, pulling Sam into a hug even though they only do that when someone’s died or nearly died or just gotten sober. “How’s Jess?” 

Sam looks at him like he’s just grown extra limbs or if he’s not entirely sure that Dean is being possessed or something, but by that point Jo’s stepped out onto the patio and is grinning at him. 

“Here for your present, Dean?” 

“Damn straight,” Dean grins, even though it hurts just a bit, and pulling his own plastic bags out the back of the Impala. He’s really hoping that Sam doesn’t decided to mention Cas, because that’s going to be really freaking awkward with Jo here to tell whoever she fancies at work. Like Benny, and Ash, and Garth. God. “You best not have chucked it, Joanna Beth.” 

“Knew you’d come round,” Jo says even though she can’t have known, because Dean hadn’t known, and Sam probably hadn’t known either. 

“Dean,” Sam says, expression a cross between sour and tearful, “I haven’t got you anything.” 

Dean huffs a laugh because, honestly, all he’s wanted for years is Sam healthy and happy and not drugged up. He’s tall and prissy and has the girliest hair Dean’s ever seen outside the female race (and more than a lot of women he knows, too)… the idea of Sam needing to buy him a present is laughable at best. It makes him feel light and freaking stupid for being such a bitch about the whole Christmas thing. 

And Sam actually listened to him. He knows that Bobby and Ellen won’t have done, and Jo and Benny definitely didn’t… but, Sam actually respected his wishes. He barely griped and moaned about it either, apart from on actual Christmas Day (and maybe Dean deserves some of the backlash for his behaviour on Christmas Day because, _really_ ) and that was… well, really it was only because Sam didn’t want him to spend the day drinking alone in his flat. 

In short, his little brother is the best. 

“Don’t worry, Sammy,” Dean grins, “you were always shit at present giving anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When thinking about a vague updating schedule, apparently you should think about whether or not you're staying with relatives that don't have wifi... woops.


	4. New Year, Leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And New Year's Eve sucks too.

“Come on, Dean,” Jo complains, sitting opposite him in the cafeteria with the Jo equivalent of a pout (which isn’t quite a pout, because Jo is a bad ass woman who cuts people open for a living and therefore doesn’t _actually_ pout, apparently) “You came to Christmas.” 

“Yeah, well,” Dean says, “the marketing got to me. I’m still Scrooge and I’m not coming to some stupid New Year’s Eve party.” 

“You like parties,” 

“It’s barely a party,” Dean says, “It’s you, Ellen and Bobby playing poker with more alcohol than usual.” 

“You like Poker and you like alcohol. I don’t see whey you’ve gotta keep punishing Sam by sitting around purposefully being miserable.” 

“I’m not punishing Sam,” Dean frowns into his coffee. It’s not really about Sam (except for the part where everything is about Sam, really, because Sam is his little brother and top priority and always will be), it’s just about not wanting to sit around pretending he’s all excited about the new year, when it’s a frigging stupid celebration anyway. 

“Well, who the hell else are you doing this for? Huh? As a mark of respect for your Dad? Because I’m sure he’d be damn proud of you sitting round whining.” 

“You know what, Jo? Dad not being proud of me? That’s not exactly a new headline.” 

“Dean,” Jo says, her expression twisting. 

“This is _exactly_ what I’m talking about,” Dean interrupts, “I don’t want to talk about any of this shit.” 

“No one will bring it up if you don’t want them to bring it up,” 

“The whole damn celebration is reflecting upon the past year, Jo.” 

“You’ve got tomorrow off,” Jo pleads, “Come on, Dean, you’ve always had a policy of drinking when you have the next day off.” 

“I never said I wasn’t gonna be drinking,” 

He’s pretty sure copious amounts of alcohol is a certainty, at this point. Besides, last year he’d spent New Year’s Eve at a neighbourly party with Lisa and Ben, and they’d left before one AM to get Ben to bed… so he needs to catch up on the drinking excessively on New Year’s Eve tradition. It’s completely necessary. He just doesn’t plan to be at the Roadhouse at the time. 

“That’s hardly fair,” Jo says, “we’ll all be worried about you, exactly like we were last week for Christmas.” 

“I’m fine,” 

“Fine isn’t drinking alone when you could be with your family,” 

“I’ll think about it,” Dean says, although he’s pretty sure he still means no. 

“Ash is coming,” Jo says, “and Jody Mills, and Rufus and… a bunch of other people.” 

He’s pretty sure that a bunch of other people means some of his Dad’s old friends, who he really really does not want to see. Most of them were pretty mad at John anyway, thanks to the disappearing acts and his general unreliability after a certain point, but they all put a on a good sham of pretending not to be mad at him at the funeral. He’s entirely sure that he cannot stand having anyone else telling him about what a good Dad John Winchester had been, before Mary died. 

“Just take your head out your ass and say you’ll come, Dean,” Jo snaps, “I get that you’ve had a really shitty year, but the wounded man act is too much. I’m asking you to come and drink with us, not martyr yourself.” 

“I’ll come if nothing else comes up, but no promises.” 

“Remember I can slice you up, Winchester,” Jo says, standing up and pointing at him warningly. “It starts at eight.” 

“Eight,” Dean nods, “right, got it.” 

He has ten minutes of staring down his now slightly cold coffee before the end of his lunch break, and not a damn clue how he’s supposed to pull some alternative plan out of his ass; he already shot down plans from Benny (who’s going to be all loved up on that girl of his, anyway, so it’s not like that’d be all that much fun) and Sam, who’s doggedly text him about the party his flatmate is hosting every day since Boxing Day. 

As if he’s going to willingly spend time with a bunch of students on New Years, even if they’re all mature students or whatever… it just, well, the whole thing is like specifically designed to make him feel old and to remind him that Sam has much more of a life than he does, despite the years he took off real living to get high somewhere. Awesome. 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, sitting down in the seat next to him like that’s normal. He’s seen him a few times in the past week, but none of the occasions had really leant themselves to actually having a conversation. The first time, Dean had just a patient throw up all over his scrubs and was attempting to be calm and not storm off to go get changed… so he hadn’t really been in the mood. The second, Cas was looking angry and talking in very deliberate tones to the hospital attorney, and Dean had taken that as a welcome sign _not_ to try and talk to him. Other than that, Cas had only ever appeared down the other end of a corridor, where there were a few seconds of their trademark _staring at each other_ before the whole saving-people-this-is-a-hospital-thing had disrupted any conversation they probably wouldn’t have had anyway. 

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says, evenly. Cas in his lab coat is a bit of a hazard, really. More so now he knows what the guy looks like naked, which probably isn’t an appropriate line of thought for the last eight minutes of his lunch break. “You working New Year's Day?” 

“No,” 

“Me neither,” Dean says, although he’s really not sure where he’s going with this. “Could do with an out, but I think Jo got to Missouri. What’s your excuse?” 

“I’m not particularly against New Years,” 

“Seriously?” Dean asks, “You’re letting me down here, Cas, I was depending on you.” Cas’ expression shifts ever so slightly into a question. “New Year's Eve sucks,” Dean says, “why, every year, do I have to celebrate the _New Year?_ Congrats, the world hasn’t ended for another year. Everyone makes shitty New Year's Resolutions that are just instruments in making them feel bad about themselves because, you know, if they were gonna do it they’d do it without the motivation of a new year. What difference does it make, huh? It’s just some stupid way we carve out our lives into manageable chunks, in order to have chick flick moments where everyone sits around talking about their feelings. It’s damn stupid.” 

“I take it you’re _not_ planning on attending Jo’s New Year’s Eve party tonight?” 

“Hell no,” Dean mutters, “think I’d rather go to Sam’s freaking college party. You doing something with your brother?” 

“I told him I was working tomorrow in order to get out of it.” 

“Wait,” Dean says, trying to catch up, “you mean you’re not doing _anything?”_

“No,” 

“Cas, you can’t just sit at home on your own on New Year’s Eve.” 

“Why? Isn’t that what you were planning on doing?” 

“Well, yeah,” Dean says, “but… that’s cause I don’t wanna sit around thinking about… how crappy this year was.” 

“And you’re less likely to do that alone?” 

Dean stares at him. 

Man’s got a point, actually, because avoiding the Roadhouse and drinking on his own is a sure fire way to ensure that he spends a couple of hours staring at walls and thinking about Lisa and Sam and Dad… but, the idea of forcing himself out there and thinking about all of that shit in public is worse, somehow. 

“Some of Dad’s old friends are gonna be there,” Dean says, after a few beats of silence, “I can’t.” Cas doesn’t say anything for a few moments, but he stares at him as if he understands and it makes Dean feel slightly better for reasons he definitely can’t understand. “So… um, I could really do with an out here, Cas. If you wanted to upgrade your plan of an early night, or whatever.” 

“I don’t finish till nine.” 

“You know the way to mine, right?” Dean asks, glancing at his watch and standing up. Cas’ gaze follows him, unperturbed. 

“Yes.” 

“See you just after nine, then?” Dean says, and maybe he smiles a little bit too much as he chucks the cold dregs of his coffee in the trash and spills back out into one of the wards but, hey, this way he’s not even lying to Jo… because something else did come up. 

(Not that he’s actually going to tell Jo that he ditched out on a New Years’ party in order to hang out with Cas, because that’s gonna lead to far too many questions he definitely doesn’t have answers to but… well, that’s a different issue altogether). 

* 

Cas turned up at half nine with a takeaway, which makes him one of the best damn people in the world, but Dean’s still not entirely sure how eating Chinese in front of the TV turned into necking on the couch, or the subsequent sex. 

Particularly as the levels of alcohol consumption are at _one beer_ (and he’s pretty sure neither of them finished those, either) but, frankly, it’s probably best not to think about it too much. 

“Don’t sleep, Cas,” Dean says, nudging him with his elbow, “thirty minutes till midnight.” 

“I thought you hated New Year’s Eve,” Cas mutters. 

“Yeah, well, doesn’t mean I plan to enter into the New Year asleep,” Dean returns, “I thought Doctors were supposed to be awake and ready for action at a moment’s notice, anyway.” 

“Dean,” Cas complains, sitting up, “I have been sleep deprived for the past decade.” 

“Sorry,” Dean grins. 

“I sincerely doubt it.” 

“Well, no,” Dean agrees, “could do you a coffee, if you like?” 

“White, no sugar.” 

“I know, Cas,” Dean says, because they’ve done coffee in bed before, and he knew Cas’ coffee preference before _that,_ even though he’s not entirely sure how. He guesses it’s one of those things that he just picked up due his slight (or not) interest in Cas from day one, but he’s not really sure that’s appropriate to bring up now. 

Dean dumps the foil trays from the takeaway in the bin (because, yeah, they were in a bit of a rush before) and turns on the stupid countdown program whilst the coffee’s brewing. It feels a bit too domestic given this is some weird fling related entirely too festive holidays, which he’s pretty sure they’ve just about ran out of. 

“So,” Dean says, returning with the coffee, “last years’ resolutions a success?” 

“I believe,” Cas says, pausing to take a sip of his coffee, “it was to move closer to Gabriel and to attempt to call my mother once a week.” 

“When was the last time you called?” 

“Before the annual argument about me not coming to Christmas, August.” 

Dean huffs a laugh and sits leans against his headboard, sipping his own coffee. He’s pretty sure he’s never had someone in this particular bed for coffee before. After moving out of Lisa’s, he’d pretty much managed a couple of weeks of half-hearted attempts at one night stands before giving up completely. He had plenty of other things to think about without attempting another relationship and, anyway, it was probably going to wind up the same way; he wasn’t ready to talk about his Dad or Sam, so he’d lie about it and it’d all come crashing down round his ears. 

Except he sort of told Cas, which was… interesting. 

“Yours?” 

“Uh, don’t sleep with any hot doctors or nurses?” Dean suggests, glancing over at Cas. Cas’ hand curls around the mug of coffee, the slight hint of a smile gracing his features. “Actually, that was the year before. Pretty sure last year it was Lisa related. And to stop smoking.” 

“You should,” Cas agrees, mouth an impertinent line, “write that down for next year, but the other two can go.” 

“I dunno, man,” Dean says, placing his coffee down on his bedside table temporarily, grinning at him, “Dad always told me you shouldn’t dip the nib in the office ink,” 

“We work at a hospital,” 

“Well, then the metaphor’s gotta be even more messed up. Maybe I will write that down again.” 

“Shut up,” Cas mutters, setting down his own coffee and reaching out to kiss him. Dean let’s himself be pulled in, still grinning, as Cas’ fingers close over his shoulder and pull him nearer. He tastes like coffee and Dean’s completely aware that Cas’ hands can save people’s lives, but _right now_ they’re making tracks across his skin and it’s all kinds of awesome (and a little more difficult to explain away in terms of festivity-related-fling, but… that can wait for another year). 

“Cas,” Dean grins, “I’m entirely too old to be having this much sex,” 

Cas hovers a moment in his personal space, kissing him again before drawing back and retrieving his coffee. 

“Fifteen minutes till midnight,” Dean says, glancing at his watch. He’s pretty sure that the TV is running through a recap of the year, but it’s on in the next room and he can only hear the muted voice of someone-or-other, rather than actual words. “So, Cas… why do you always give me such a hard time at work, anyway?” 

Cas looks at him very seriously for a moment. 

“I mean, we’ve spent half the year yelling at each other… thought I might as well ask. New Year and all.” 

“I moved in part thanks to a… somewhat complicated relationship with the chief of medicine.” 

“Huh,” Dean says, “maybe _your_ New Years’ resolution should be to not sleep with colleagues, too.” 

“You’re very distracting, Dean, and I didn’t wish to be distracted. Everyone is in love with you, you don’t follow the rules, you never _listen_ to what I’m trying to tell you, you’re disregard of protocol –” 

“– Cas, I do the right thing, protocol be damned.” 

“Yes, Dean,” Cas says, “but not everyone can have your conviction about what is right and wrong, and not everyone has the luxury of ignoring hospital rules at will. It is impossible not to become involved in your crusade to make patients happy, rules be damned, and I want you to get away with it, despite the fact that I shouldn’t.” 

“Who the hell is this everyone that’s in love with me, anyway?” 

“This isn’t a personal attack,” 

“Certainly feels like it,” Dean grumbles. 

“You were _everywhere_ the first few days I was here,” Cas says, frowning, “making exceptions for patients you liked and charming everyone and somehow managing to make scrubs attractive –” 

“– hold up,” Dean interrupts, his brain finally catching up and translating Cas-speak into proper English, “so what you’re saying…is that you had a _massive_ crush on me and that I help people?” 

“Yes.” 

“I can live with it,” Dean grins, “and you were jealous of who now?” 

“Jo,” 

“Ha,” Dean grins, “Jo might have fancied me when we were like twelve, Cas, but she’s a grown ass woman and I’m pretty sure I’ve thrown up on her too many times for that. We should add curb irrational jealous onto your resolution list.” 

“Five minutes,” Cas says, picking up Dean’s phone to check the time, “and you have new messages.” 

“That’s Jo sending me love poems,” Dean winks, picking up and scrolling through several increasingly violent text messages from Jo, detailing what she’s going to do to him when she see’s him at work on the second. “I’m not trying to break the rules, Cas,” Dean says, “some of the rules are just dumb.” 

“Yes,” Cas agrees, “that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for breaking them.” 

“Yeah… how is being sued?” 

“I have a good lawyer,” Cas says, “Unfortunately, I think she has a better one. Tell me about Lisa.” 

“Not a very interesting story,” Dean says, closing his eyes for a second, “we were together for just over a year. Moved in with her and her kid. Didn’t work out.” Cas watches him, silently waiting for him to elaborate. “I don’t really miss Lisa, I knew that was coming… deserved it, too, but I miss Ben. He’s a good kid.” 

Maybe if Dean had told Lisa the truth, rather than telling her that he wasn’t really in contact with his family and they weren’t all that close and that there was no story there, absolutely not, then they might still be together. Except, he can’t really place himself back in that house… nor taking Ben to football games on his days off, and not drinking too much, and playing at the picket fence dream. 

That was why he was lying, really, because it wasn’t _him_ and he didn’t fit in there, and if he was going to lie about that, he might as well lie about the rest to. 

“What a freaking year,” 

“I thought you disliked sitting around mulling over the year,” 

“Shut up, Cas,” Dean counters, glancing at his phone, “you know I don’t mean like any of what I said about Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year’s. Three minutes.” 

“I did, mostly,” 

“That sucks,” Dean says, “Cas, that really sucks. Next year you should go to your Mom’s for Christmas and just make them deal with it, okay? Bring a hot date and spend Boxing Day hungover and full and cranky, and New Years at your brother’s college friend’s party. If you get really really drunk, I’m pretty sure you won’t notice how much of a freaking bust it is.” 

“Two minutes.” 

“That’s your resolution,” Dean says, “I’ll give up smoking if you take up holidays,” 

“And you?” 

“I dunno if I’ll be able to face them yet,” Dean says, frowning slightly, “right now it’s just… I can’t. But, maybe next year.” 

“That’s in two minutes, Dean.” 

“Don’t,” Dean grimaces, “I hate those shitty new year jokes, man. And the shitty new years’ kisses after the countdown and… does anyone even care about fireworks, anyway?” 

He’s thinking about that time he and Sam let off fireworks together in that field in the middle of the night. Now he’s a nurse, he’s sort of aware that it wasn’t his most safety-conscious decision, but Sam’s expression of delight is burnt onto his eyeballs… that’s one of his favourite memories, actually. 

But still. Right now, fireworks suck. 

“One minute,” 

“I bet Sammy’s running round the apartment trying to find Jess, the big girl. And Jo’s apparently still sending me death threats, so there’s that. Oh God, the TV countdown. Why did I put that on?” 

He can hear them yelling about it being thirty seconds, and he’s about to make another complaint when Cas kisses him, and keeps kissing him, right through the countdown. 

“Happy New Year, Dean,” Cas says, his deep voice doing to his internal organs and travelling right through to his bones. Huh. 

“Happy New Year, Cas,” Dean says, not breaking eye contact for a good thirty seconds before realising that’s weird, and checking his phone in order to have something to do with his hands (which isn’t reach out and tangle his hands in Cas’ hair, or remaining clothing…). “Message from Sam,” Dean says, holding it out for him to read, “Reckon that was supposed to tell me I’m gonna be 36 next year, before the Tequila shots. Jo says she wanted to send me the first insult of the year, and she thought she’d better get in there quick case I piss anyone else off first. Huh, charming. Benny wants to know how I’m enjoying the year so far and, God, Garth has text me. The hell did he get my number?” 

“What does Garth say?” 

“Haven’t seen you all year, sad face. From Garth. Must be with Jo. These god damn parties can’t be that good if everyone’s just on their phones,” Dean grouses, “and the same jokes every damn year.” 

“Dean,” Cas says, very seriously, “we haven’t had sex all year.” 

“Well, shit,” Dean grins, dropping his phone onto the bedside table “let’s get us both dehymenated.” 

* 

Dean hasn’t shared a bed with anyone for quite a while, so he’s pretty glad that Cas is just slightly in his personal space rather than wrapped around him; there’s also something a little too familiar about having Cas here, even though this is genuinely only the second time this has happened. 

Dean sits up slightly, thinking over the prospect of coffee and not getting to a decision about whether it’s worth getting up for. Technically, this is his day off… so there’s no real reason to get up. Although, it’d be nice to see Sam because Sam’s gonna be too hungover to be trying to get any college work done, but that also sort of depends on how long Cas is gonna be asleep (and if he was going to stay for any length of the time after he woke up). 

Dean picks up his phone and the freezes at the message from Sam. 

_Talked to Jo. Heading over now._

Sent fifteen minutes ago. 

And Sam was, undoubtedly, going to really really pissed at him. 

“Cas,” Dean says, nudging him awake, “Cas, my brother is gonna be here in like two minutes. You gotta go.” 

Cas opens one impossible blue and extremely irritate eye to glare at him. 

“Why?” Cas asks, sitting up. Dean blinks. “So your brother is going to be here, why do I have to leave?” 

“Because he’s already pissed,” Dean says. Possibly, he should have mentioned to someone that he had no intention of actually attending Jo’s party, but then explaining the whole Cas thing was near impossible so… there wasn’t exactly another option. 

“Given your phone conversation on Boxing Day, I’m sure your brother has worked out that you’re bisexual, Dean.” 

“I’m not…” Dean starts, before stopping because he doesn’t really have a leg to stand on with that one, and Cas’ whole expression is a warning. He’s sat up and is reaching for his shirt and Dean’s not sure whether or not that’s a good thing or not. He doesn’t want Cas to leave, or be mad at him for that matter, but… it’s not like he has a choice here. “I didn’t tell Sam I was skipping out on Jo’s,” 

Apparently, that wasn’t a helpful comment either. 

“Your brother is an adult,” Cas says, nearly dressed now, “I am entirely sure he would have dealt with it.” 

“Well, Sam’s not really the problem,” 

“No,” Cas agrees, standing up, “ _you’re_ the problem here, Dean.” 

“Don’t wake up the sleep deprived Doctor, got it.” 

“I doubt it will be an issue again,” Cas says, which kinda hurts actually. God, he’d wanted to stretch the morning out for a good few hours… more coffee and, this time he has food in, so he could have made Cas breakfast. He’s pretty sure he could have talked Cas into watching half a season of Dr Sexy, too, but now Sam’s on his way and his whole pretty illusion has shattered. Damnit. 

So, Dean’s not going to be waking Cas up again anytime soon. So, whatever this whole _thing_ actually is, it’s over because Dean is making him leave. Awesome. 

“Fine,” Dean agrees. 

Again, wrong thing to say if the lines of Cas shoulders are anything to go by. 

“I do not appreciate being picked up on a whim, Dean.” 

He’s stepping out into the next room to find his trousers and his coat. 

“God, Cas, I’ve been interested since the beginning so don’t give me that shit,” Dean bites out, watching him from the doorway to his bedroom. Half of him wants to scream at him to hurry up, because Sam could be here at any second, and the other half wants to drag him back to his bed and refuse to let him leave at all. “And all I get is you yelling at me all the damn time, so don’t…” he doesn’t know what he doesn’t want Cas to do, but it’s something. “Just, don’t, Cas.” 

“Is this another of those things you _‘can’t’_ do?” Cas asks, whilst he’s pulling on the freaking ridiculous trench coat. And he’s right, actually, because he can’t do this. He can’t have Sam walking in on this scene, because it’s just… it entails conversations that he’s been avoiding for years, and talking about this stuff makes it ever so slightly more real and complicated. 

Dean’s halfway to a reply with Sam throws open the front door. He hadn’t even heard his key in the lock. 

“What _the hell_ is your problem, Dean?” Sam asks, before he registers the fact that Dean’s only wearing boxers and is having a staring competition with a man in a trench coat. 

“Oh,” Jess mutters, and Dean can feel his resolve shattering. Why did Jess have to be here too? It just made everything so much worse. 

“Can you just go?” Dean asks Cas quietly, feeling oddly hollowed out shitty for letting the words escape his lips. Instead of the fury Dean was expecting, Cas just seems to close off completely which is definitely worse than anger. 

“Of course,” Cas says, too formal and slightly stilted. Shit. 

He wants to say something like _I’ll see you at work_ or _I’ll call you_ but he doesn’t quite get there, because Sam and Jess. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t go to Jo’s damn party, all right?” Dean demands, grabbing his dressing gown out of his wardrobe and storming over to the coffee machine. Sam is cataloguing the two cups of coffee by his bed, the lack of empty alcohol bottles and the fact that Dean is pretty underdressed to have casual visitors, which is just great. Awesome. Freaking exactly what he wanted to be dealing with today. 

“Was that Cas?” Sam asks, stepping further into his room with Jess slightly behind him. 

“Does it matter?” 

“Is that a _thing_ now?” 

“No, Sam, it’s not a damn thing,” 

“Dean,” Sam says, one of his notorious bitch faces settling over his face, “I’m pretty sure spending Christmas and New Years with a guy, rather than with your own family, makes it _a thing._ ” 

“Drop it,” Dean warns, “you wanna yell at me about skipping out on New Year’s, fine, but leave _that_ out of it.” 

“You can’t just have some… some gay relationship and not _mention_ it, Dean.” 

“It’s not a damn relationship,” Dean snaps, “he hates Christmas, I hate Christmas. It’s like festive hate sex.” 

“Dean,” Sam says, “you _don’t_ hate Christmas. You love Christmas.” 

That’s true. For the past twenty five years, Dean has been the advocate for Christmas whilst Sam always bitched and moaned about it till the last minute. He soldiered them all through years of slightly tepid Christmases with discount Christmas Puddings and Christmas crackers. 

But that’s the crutch of it, really, because he was always so determined to make some good Christmas memories and it wound up coming up short… so why keep trying? 

“Not anymore,” Dean says, picking up the two half empty beers from the foot of the couch and dumping them, somewhat aggressively, into the trash. “Happy freaking New year, Sammy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a few days later than intended. I was dealing with the double excitement of Sherlock and my paperback release, so spent the last few days a pretty giddy and excited mess. BUT, the next (and final) chapter is pretty much done, so hopefully that'll be up before everyone wants to put the festive season behind them and forget it ever happened till next year?


	5. January (also sucks)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the worst month of the year. Probably.

He’s pretty sure Sam’s bitching has knocked something loose in his head, because he got up earlier than needed to take a detour to Starbucks and get Cas some coffee. The coffee at the hospital is subpar at best, and he’s pretty sure he’s heard Cas complaining about it before. He didn’t really _mean to,_ he just sort of remembered that Cas’ break lined up with the start of Dean’s shift and then he was talking a left instead of a right and bought coffee. 

Except, by the time he actually gets to work he’s completely talked himself out of it. Cas is mad at him, anyway, and he has no business buying him coffee. In real terms, the whole thing was just some weird quirk of the festive season and buying Cas coffee is just gonna make the whole thing more awkward. Probably. 

Plus, he’s pretty sure it doesn’t really excuse him for the whole making him leave about two minutes after he woke up. On New Year’s Day. 

When he gets to the break room to dump his stuff, Cas isn’t there. Jo is, though, and she doesn’t look particularly pleased to see him. 

“Want coffee?” Dean asks, giving her the coffee he intended to give to Cas because at least it means he’s not awkwardly hold a surplus cup. 

“If that’s supposed to be my apology,” Jo says, peeling off the lid, “It’s milk and two sugars off the mark. I’ve known you since I was nine, Dean, you could at least have learnt how I take my damn coffee before you try and crawl back into my good books.” 

“Jo, come on,” Dean says, sitting next to her, “I’m sorry, okay?” 

“Sam’s like my brother and your Dad was family,” Jo frowns, fingers digging into the coffee cup, and glancing at the floor. “I just wanted you to be there.” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, forehead creasing, “Jo, I couldn’t.” 

“You could have just _said.”_

“Jo, do you know how freaking hard it is to stay no to your nagging? You and your Mom are freaking impossible.” 

“Oh you’ve said no to me plenty, Winchester,” Jo says, raising her eyebrows. So, yeah, maybe Jo’s teen crush had lasted for quite a while and involved a lot of Dean pretending not to notice… but, _well._

“I’ll make it up to you if you promise not to rat me out to Sammy next time I do something stupid,” Dean says, “I’ll take you out for lunch or something.” 

“You’re a bit late to be trying to wheedle your way into a New Year’s kiss, Dean,” Jo grins. 

“I tried that once, remember? You hit me and gave me a lecture about self-respect.” 

“Yeah well,” Jo returns, “you deserved it. Hey, Cas,” Jo says, raising a hand in greeting. Dean’s throat tightens and internally decides that is the _worst_ possible conversation for Cas to walk in on, and tries to backtrack and work out exactly how much Cas would have heard and how much he’s definitely screwed. He glances at Cas and then immediately regrets it. Damn his Doctor get up. 

“Hey,” Dean manages, catching Cas’ eye completely by accident and getting a little bit stuck there. And Cas is definitely still pissed, which isn’t really much of a surprise at this point. He’d be pissed. 

“Shouldn’t you quit grovelling and get to work, Dean?” Jo asks, “And next time you buy a girl coffee, maybe you should get the order right.” 

“Shove it,” Dean mutters, although it’s a bit half-hearted and a lot awkward. “Uh, do I need to send your Mom a fruit basket?” 

“And some,” Jo says, cheerfully, “Good luck, Winchester.” 

Yeah. He’s gonna need it. 

* 

For reasons that are completely beyond Dean’s comprehension, his shit of a brother is sat on his sofa when Dean gets back to his apartment after work on Friday. By all rights, he should be out on some date with Jess, or at least not be up in Dean’s space ready for another round of bitching at him about all his life choices while Dean pointedly doesn’t listen and occasionally puts in a ‘no comment.’ 

“Gonna ask for the key to my apartment back if you don’t watch it, Sam.” 

“Is your Cas a Castiel, by any chance?” Sam asks, looking up at him. He can’t actually remember the last time Sam looked at him without looking stupidly guilty or pissed off, and it’s god damn annoying; for the longest time after Sam got out of rehab, he was subject to the too-precious-for-this-world looks and Sam spontaneously bursting into garbled apologies about what Sam had done to him. It’s not like he’d ever say he preferred Sam guilty and apologetic, but with the constant bitch faces he’d almost considers it. 

Especially as he must have got Cas’ full name from Jo. 

“He’s not my Cas,” Dean counters, “and quit gossiping with Jo, Samantha.” 

“I haven’t been talking to Jo,” Sam says, slowly, “I was talking to Gabe,” 

“What’s your shitty flatmate got to do with anything?” Dean asks, stepping over to the fridge and pulling out a beer. Normally, he’d give one to Sam on automatic, but he doesn’t really feel like it right now. 

“His brother came over,” Sam says, and Dean can tell by the tone of his voice that he’s pissed, “he’s a doctor, you know.” 

_Gabriel._

“Ah, shit.” 

“And you know, I didn’t recognise him from that _thirty seconds_ I met him before, but he definitely recognised me.” 

“Well, he’s an even shitter brother than me,” Dean comments, “I mean, Gabriel has a different surname but –” 

“– you slept with my flatmate’s brother, a lot, _it sounds like,_ and you didn’t call him,” Sam interrupts, standing up and glaring at him. This isn’t really his fault. It’s not like he could have predicted that Sam’s roommate just happened to be Cas’ brother, and it’s not really fair for Sam to hold that against him. 

“I don’t have his number,” Dean bites back and, yeah, that’s all kinds of fucked up. Probably should have asked for it at some point in between all the sex. 

“You work with him,” Sam snaps, “It can’t have been that to grab him for a moment to have a conversation. And aren’t you a bit old to be having a sexuality crisis, Dean?” 

“Well maybe I’ve been neck deep in _other crises_ for the past two decades,” Dean snaps back, before instantly regretting it. Sam’s face instantly resets to deep set guilt, which Dean cringes aware from. “Sam, I didn’t mean that.” 

“Yes you did,” Sam says, “and that’s okay, Dean.” 

“No it’s not,” Dean says, setting down his beer. Sam is hovering near the couch and Dean is staring at him from the kitchen. He would very much like to walk away from this conversation and take Sam’s key and barricade himself in his internal project of self-hatred, but they’d all drag him out of the front door eventually. 

Every single damn time he skips out on one of these festivities, he’s breaking Sam a little bit. And Sam’s never gonna call him out on it, because Sam broke him first. 

One day, Dean’s gonna push him too far and, that time, it’ll be Dean that pushes him away and over the edge. He just can’t seem to stop himself. It’s like his knee-jerk reaction to seeing Sam, because this is _the brother he bought up_ who lied to him about a fucking full ride to fund his stupid coke habit and it _hurt._ He can’t even fathom into words how it felt when he found out the extent of Sam’s lying and the extent of how much Sam was prepared to pick some high over him. 

But this isn’t exactly a sustainable solution. 

“Sam, you gotta tell me when I’m being a dick,” Dean says, “I can’t keep punishing you for forever.” 

“Dean,” Sam says, big eyes coming out, “I lied to you, I stole from you, I ran away from you, I… after everything that you did for me, Dean, I threw that all back in your face. I don’t _deserve_ any of this from you… you shouldn’t even trust me with a key to your apartment. Dean, you shouldn’t be giving me the time of day let alone supporting me through college. Again. You… you have every right to punish me for _all of that.”_

“No, Sammy,” Dean counters, gut twisting, “I can’t do that to you, it’s not fair.” 

“ _I_ wasn’t fair,” 

“You were high, you weren’t thinking about me, it’s not…” Dean interrupts, before Sam can drag up any of the rest of it, “I’m not saying that all of that stuff isn’t true, Sam, but I didn’t put you through freaking rehab so I could make you feel guilty about it for the rest of your life, okay?” 

“We never talk about it,” 

“Cause I don’t wanna think about it,” Dean says, picking up his beer again, “I don’t wanna resent you, Sam. And I don’t want you to resent me either so we just… Level playing field, new start.” 

“But…” 

“Sam, we’re not gonna get past this unless we actually move past it. I can’t keep this up. I hate myself for it. New start.” 

“Okay,” Sam says, nodding and slightly teary. “New start.” 

“So, you tell me when I’m being a dick, Sammy,” Dean says, taking a swig of his beer, “and I’ll work on it. Have a beer, Bitch.” 

“Jerk,” Sam says, and a few moments of silence later, “Dean, I think you’re being a dick about Cas.” 

“Conversation not happening,” Dean mutters, falling onto the sofa and turning on Dr Sexy, “If you’re hanging around, do us a favour and order in some pizza.” 

* 

It’s been two weeks of not having conversations and Dean occasionally making detours to Starbucks and buying two cups of coffee, even though his resolve lasts him till the car park before he gives up on the idea and resigns himself to more awkward silence. 

Except, right now, he’d take the silence. 

“Winchester,” Cas demands, approaching him down one of the corridors looking probably about as pissed as the time Dean had told him to take a walk on New Year’s, only this time for a completely stupid reason that Dean _really_ had hoped Cas wouldn’t find out about. “I _told you_ not to allow Mr Morgan to leave.” 

Yeah,” Dean agrees, not pausing in his walk down the corridor, “unfortunately, this is a hospital and not a prison so…” 

“I _specifically_ told you not to allow him to leave.” Cas says, grabbing hold of his arm and forcing him to turn and look him dead in the eye. They haven’t really done the whole eye contact thing for the past fortnight, so he’d sort of forgotten how disarming it was. 

“It’s his son’s fourth birthday party,” 

“And my patient was in no state to leave –” 

“– he’ll be back in like twenty minutes,” Dean says, gut twisting, “It’s cool, Cas, don’t worry about it.” 

“Over-extortion –” 

“– It’s a freaking four year olds birthday party, they’ll be ice cream and jelly.” 

“Not only did you allow him to leave without the proper paperwork, you accompanied him to the car.” 

“I’d have accompanied him to the damn party if I could switch my shift.” 

“Dean, my _patient_ is not in a fit condition to leave the hospital.” 

“That’s interesting,” Dean bites back, “because _my_ patient has been in hospital for months, including the whole festive period, is in a stable condition and _wanted to go home for two freaking hours to watch his son turn four._ By the time we’ve finished this god damn argument, his brother will be driving him back here. Jesus, what does it matter?” 

“It matters because I _told you specifically_ not to allow that man to discharge himself –” 

“Have a fucking heart, Cas,” 

He sort of regrets his choice in wording, there, because Cas went from looking sexy and a bit intimidating to downright fucking terrifying. He’s pretty sure that if they weren’t currently in their place of work, Cas would have hit him. 

“If anything happens to my patient,” Cas says, voice dipping deeper and more dangerous, “I will personally make sure that you are held responsible.” 

“You know what?” Dean says, taking a step into his personal space, “fuck you, Cas. I’m not some dumb ass nurse who can’t make a freaking decision. He’s my patient too. If I thought he was at any kind of risk, I wouldn’t have let him go.” 

“That wasn’t your decision to make, Winchester.” 

“No, it was _Mr Morgan’s decision_ and he chose to go to the damn birthday party.” 

“You facilitated –“ 

“– he would have gone anyway! Do you understand people at all, huh? It was his son’s frigging birthday party, for fuck’s sake. I’m not gonna apologise for doing the right thing, just cause you told me not to.” 

“Deano,” Ash says, poking his head into the corridor, “thought I heard you down here. Mr Morgan’s back, and he’s bought you some birthday cake.” 

“Guess my job’s safe for another day. Have a good one, Doctor.” Dean says, glaring at Cas for a few seconds before walking out and kicking the wall to vent some of his frustration. 

Cas calls “Dean” after him, but he doesn’t turn around. 

* 

He’d gone to Sam’s after his shift and only realised when he was letting himself into his kitchen that Gabe, the very thing he wanted to rant about’s brother, might very well be sat around with one of his stupid shit eating grins plastered all over his face. Thankfully, it turned out Gabriel was in Chicago for the weekend trying to talk round his ex-girlfriend, or something. 

Still, Sam had been pretty surprised to find Dean on his couch and ready to actually talk (or more, rant about) the whole Cas situation, provided Sam agreed not to say anything till after he was finished talking. 

Unfortunately, he’d just got to the last bit about how this morning Cas had sort of threatened him and, as a result, Dean had comfort ate a little bit too much birthday cake. Then he’d been forced to go see Missouri, who wanted to know why he’d been yelling at a particular Doctor in the middle of the corridor, before making him promise to apologise first thing tomorrow morning or she’d put him on Friday night shifts every week until he retired. 

“So he actually threatened to report you?” 

“Sort of,” Dean says, “he doesn’t mean it. He’s been threatening to report me since August, but he’s never followed up on it so…” 

“I don’t get how you went from him threatening to jeopardise your job to spending Christmas together,” 

“Jess never made you sit through a chick flick, huh?” Dean asks, “Whatever. Like, the one time Cas broke the rules, he wound up getting sued. I get it… just, dude needs to get off my back,” 

“I didn’t realise that was the issue we were talking about, here,” Sam says, “but if you wanna continue ignoring the fact that you really like the guy, you feel free.” 

“Thanks, bitch,” 

“Jerk,” Sam returns, “Come on, what are we talking here? I’ve never seen you get like this over a sex thing. So…” 

“So?” Dean asks, glancing behind him from the sofa. Sam is looking far too pleased with himself about the whole thing, which isn’t exactly good news for his self-respect. Then again, that’s utterly screwed to hell given the length of the current length of this conversation about his feelings. For a guy. 

“What did you guys even talk about? Assuming you, you know, talked.” 

“Back off,” Dean mutters, “And _yes_ we talked. Lots of classy intellectual stuff.” 

“You can’t just have sat there for hours talking about how shit Christmas is and then jumped into bed with him,” Sam says, throwing up his hands, “and if you can’t have a conversation about work without yelling at each other, then you must have talked about _something_?” 

“The Christmas thing had a lot of material, Sam. Addiction and homophobia and daddy issues.” Sam is starting at him. “Besides, he watches Dr Sexy.” 

“You found someone else he watches Dr Sexy?” Sam asks, “God, maybe you should marry the guy.” 

“And then,” Dean continues, eyes closed, “we did lunch and he talked me into buying that crappy wrapping paper for your excuse of a Christmas present.” 

“Dean,” Sam says, “you’ve practically been dating the guy. What happened?” 

“You were coming over,” Dean admits through gritted teeth, “so I told him to leave.” 

“Dean,” Sam exhales. 

“Whatever,” Dean says, fingers reaching for the back of his neck on impulse, “it doesn’t matter.” 

“You talked to him about… me,” Sam says, slowly, “And Dad. Dean, you lied to Lisa about _all_ of that for nearly a year. I mean, if you’d talked to him about Lisa and Ben too then…” Dean makes a non-committal noise, “you talked about _Lisa and Ben?_ You told me to never mention them again. Dean, you can’t just let this fly because of some stupid argument at work and some, I don’t know, gay crisis.” 

“Quit with the gay talk, Sam.” 

“You didn’t even mean to tell me about this in the first place,” Sam implores, “you forgot how much you’d complained about Cas before that phone conversation. Dean… no one cares about the fact that you like dudes. Okay? Maybe this Cas guy is good for you.” 

“Unless I piss him off and lose my job,” Dean suggests, “just, Sam, how the hell am I gonna face him tomorrow?” 

“A white flag of surrender?” Sam suggests, lips quirking, “or maybe a nice rainbow one.” 

Dean takes that opportunity to cuff his lanky little brother round the head. 

* 

“Hey,” Dean says, standing in the doorway to Missouri’s office feeling beyond normal levels of awkward. Missouri had pretty much dragged his ass from the cafeteria and shoved him through the door before he’d had a chance to conjure up some level of excuse about how forcing him to apologise really wasn’t a good idea. And it wasn’t a good idea, either, because he wasn’t _sorry_ (at least about the thing with Mr Morgan) and he’s shit at apologises. 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas returns, glancing up from the seat behind Missouri’s desk looking very tried. 

“So, um, I bought you coffee,” Dean says, “except its cold.” 

“Thank you,” 

“I actually bought you coffee a few times,” Dean says, “Except I never gave it to you. Um, sorry about that.” 

“I almost feel,” Cas says, reaching forward to accept the coffee, “that you’re apologising about the coffee in order to have something to report to Missouri.” 

“Okay,” Dean says, leaning against the edge of the desk, “You got me. That woman can see right through people, I swear. She can like smell when I’m lying.” 

“I’m sorry that I do not plan on apologising, either.” Cas says, picking up the cold Starbucks and taking a sip. 

“You don’t want that, Cas,” Dean says, frowning, “it’s cold.” 

“I appreciate the gesture,” 

“Why?” Dean asks, ringing his hands slightly, “Cas, come on, it’s cold coffee. That’s a shitty gesture. Don’t thank me for cold coffee. “ 

Cas takes a sip anyway. 

“At least you got my order right,” 

“Oh God,” Dean mutters, “The coffee I gave to Jo was supposed to be for you, too. And she’s still mad at me. I fucked up, Cas.” 

Cas is staring at him, and his gaze is just as stupidly intense and blue as it was yesterday except without all the anger. Instead he looks half curious, as if he’s trying to work out what the hell Dean means (which would be pretty impressive, because he’s still not really sure what all those extra discarded coffees mean anyway). 

“I’m not sorry about yelling at you, Dean,” 

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, and he’s pretty sure they’re slightly closer than they were a few minutes ago, “I’m not sorry about that, either.” 

“I regret a number of the things I said,” 

“Yeah, same,” Dean says. There’s a long pause where they just look at each other and Dean remembers the bit about not knowing what the hell he’s doing or where he’s even trying to get to with all of this. “I mean…. I _was_ right and the birthday cake _was_ awesome.” 

“It was an unnecessary risk,” Cas counters, “You can’t risk your job every time there’s a child’s birthday party, Dean,” 

“That’s kinda the only reason I’m here,” Dean shrugs. 

Cas huffs a little noise of displeasure. They’re back on track with agreeing to disagree and not yelling things at each other, so it’s sort of natural progression that they shift even closer; he’s close enough that it would all too easy to just reach out and touch, pull him closer. 

Cas sets the cold coffee back down on Missouri’s desk and leans forward in his chair. 

“This really is very cold, Dean,” 

Dean half snorts, but then Cas is leaning forward and Dean’s pretty sure that he himself closes the gap (because he winds up more in the vicinity of the chair than the desk, which isn’t really all that practical actually). It hasn’t exactly been a great expanse of time, but Dean had sort of forgotten how frigging fantastic kissing Cas was. 

Cas is lips and tongue and teeth and _warmth._ He pushes back into Dean’s personal space, until he’s backed up against the desk with his hands grappling for a handful of Cas’ shirt for something to hang on to. Considering he was so damn determined not to apologise he’s doing a pretty good job of muttering his sorrys into Cas’ neck. It’s possibly his dick doing some of the talking, because he hadn’t even been fully aware of the extent of guilt that had been sitting in his stomach in regard to everything Cas related; but now it’s uncurling from somewhere around his liver and spilling out from his throat and he really – 

– Missouri is coughing from the doorway and Dean is entirely sure that he wants to die. 

“I see you boys kissed and made up,” Missouri says, looking deeply unimpressed, and Dean wants to carve some vital internal organ out with a scalpel because this is definitely something that he can’t deal with. “This isn’t what my office is for, Dean.” 

He gapes at her. He’s relinquished his hold on Cas’ clothing, but otherwise hasn’t managed to move a muscle. He has the vague intention of doing so, but he’s also pretty sure he just _fully_ outed himself. To Missouri. 

“Well, get going with you both,” Missouri says, finally, “I’m sick of looking at you.” 

Dean finally manages to get his limbs to cooperate and tries to straighten his scrubs without looking like he’s straightening his scrubs on the way out of Missouri’s office, Cas right behind him. Right before he gets to the door he realises that when he’s outside the door, he has to have some kind of conversation with Cas about that thing that just happened there. He nearly freezes up all over again but somehow manages to stop himself, pushing onwards until he steps out into the corridor beyond. 

Dean turns to look at Cas, some half assed excuse about needing to be on one of the wards dying before he has a chance to voice it. Cas is looking at him. Dean is looking back. It’s another glorified staring contest in the middle of the damn hospital, and he’s pretty sure they’re each waiting for the other to speak. 

“So that was awkward,” Dean says, to fill in the silence. Cas keeps staring at him. “Erm…Sorry about that,” Dean says, nodding towards the door to Missouri’s office, before he practically runs away and buries himself in the ICU until long after Cas’ shift has finished. 

He’s done a grand frigging job for a guy who’d been up half the night reminding himself not to apologise. 

* 

Dean definitely isn’t moping into his coffee thanks to his A+ job of once again messing up the Cas situation (because who the hell apologises for a completely legitimate make out session that he definitely wasn’t sorry about, anyway?), and Benny definitely isn’t assuring him that it’s going to be fine, because he’s not a teenager girl and he doesn’t really like Cas anyway. 

Well, he does. He actually likes quite a lot of things about Cas (maybe most of them, really), considering they spend so much time at loggerheads. And he’s still stupidly attractive and he’s still a frigging amazing lay, but that doesn’t mean that Dean actually ever thought it was all going to work out and be a relationship or whatever. So it’s not like it actually matters that Dean managed to mess up (twice) something that might possibly have been really good… at least not more than the fact it makes it awkward at work. 

Really. 

“The hell, Winchester?” Jo demands, sitting down opposite him, “You think you can go and have some gay crisis with Castiel and not freaking mention it?” 

Dean chokes. 

“ _Castiel_ , Dean!” Jo says, “Castiel!” 

“Shut up,” Dean says, glancing around to see if anyone is listening because… shit. 

Benny is sitting back in his seat and raising his eyebrows. 

So maybe Dean hadn’t mentioned a name. Or a gender. Or given any details apart the fact that he’d majorly messed up with someone he really quite liked. 

Goddamn. 

“Are you serious?” Jo demands, “You assured me that you were a hundred percent straight, Winchester.” 

“When I was _sixteen_ Jo, Jesus,” Dean mutters, “and can you keep your frigging voice down?” 

“He’s not in today,” 

“Other people are!” Dean snaps, “Wait, he’s supposed to be in today.” 

“Oh my god,” Jo says, staring at him, “What, you’re in love with him now or something?” 

“Who the hell did you get this from anyway?” Dean demands, “If my brother –” 

“– don’t dodge the question,” 

“You can dodge my frigging coffee if you don’t tell me who knows about this, Jo, I swear.” 

“Okay,” Jo exhales, “I overhead Missouri giving Cas a pep talk about how you’re scared of your own damn feelings,” Jo says, “so I called Sam and threatened to tell Jess about that time he ate nine boxes of lucky charms, and he coughed up the whole story. Dean,” Jo says, “you skipped Christmas to sleep with the hottest doctor in this place!” 

“Sonuvabitch,” Dean mutters, “Voice down,” 

“And whilst I was sending frigging death threats you were screwing him. _Castiel._ Who as good as threatened to get you sacked three days ago!” 

Dean stares at her. 

“Damn,” Jo says, shaking her head, “You realise how many hearts you’ve just collectively broken here, Dean? Two hottest guys in this place and they have to frigging find each other.” 

“It’s a real tragedy,” Dean grimaces, “or maybe it would be, if we had _‘found each other’_ or whatever poetry you’re waxing over there. It’s done.” 

“Dean,” Jo complains, “what did you _do?_ ” 

“Mr brain derailed, okay?” Dean hisses. 

“No, you asshole!” Jo hisses back, leaning forward over the desk. “If you’re gonna bail on family for Christmas and New Year’s the least you can do is not fuck it up before I get to tease you about it! I don’t care if you have commitment issues, and weird co-dependency issues with Sam and whole stack of shit to do with your Dad that I ain’t even gonna touch, you sort this out before I out you,” 

“You pretty much just did,” Dean retorts, flicking a packet of sugar in her direction, “you have no cards, Jo. Fold.” 

“I’ll tell Mom and Bobby.” 

Well, Ellen will probably have the same kinda argument as Jo in regards to him not mentioning it, but Ellen tends to be less violent. He can handle Ellen (at least in regards to this anyway). And Bobby won’t care. Grouchy, tough old man that he is, they’ve been through too much for him to care about something dumb like that. 

“Go for it,” Dean says, “they won’t care.” 

“I’ll call Lisa,” 

“Jesus, what’s it got to do with Lisa?” 

“Rufus,” 

“Jo,” Dean says, “there isn’t a damn person I care about who is gonna give a shit.” 

“Exactly,” Jo says, standing up triumphantly. Dean stops short and stares are her because, shit, he just said it. 

There isn’t a single person who he loves who’s going to care that Cas is a man, or that he may not be as straight was formerly believed. He doesn’t care if any of them find out. At all. Which is… derailing, for one. A huge frigging relief, for seconds. 

“Fix it, Winchester,” Jo says, “Or I’ll tell Pamela.” 

Gynaecologist, resident gossip and not Cas’ biggest fan. 

“Gotcha,” 

* 

He’s spent about twenty minutes wondering round the hospital trying to find Cas, who’s definitely in today and is definitely still on shift… but, by the time he’s finally managed to locate him he’s freaked himself out to unnecessary levels. 

“Cas,” Dean calls out, half running down the corridor after him. He doesn’t turn around. “ _Castiel,”_

Cas turns on instinct. Dean swallows. 

He very much wants to reach out and grab a handful of lab coat to anchor Cas here and make sure he can’t walk away from this conversation. Or Dean, actually, because through the turbulence of all these festivities Cas is one of the only things that has made him feel grounded. That’s all kinds of dumb given their somewhat out of order history and everything. 

“Look, Cas, are you free a second? I got a problem.” 

Cas turns around with a blank expression. 

“I have five minutes.” 

Oh God, he’d be sort of nervous enough without the fact that he’s dealing with Robo-Cas rather than the proper Cas, but it stands to reason really; other than a really quite shit conversation where they were both stubbornly refusing to apologise and then suddenly making out and apologising a lot, they haven’t exactly talked since New Year’s. Except for those awkward work conversations and less awkward and more unpleasant shouting matches. 

“In here a sec,” Dean says, ducking into one of the patient’s cubicles, “This girls in a coma.” 

“I know,” Cas deadpans, “I’m a Doctor.” 

Dean gets caught up staring at him for a few long seconds. Honestly, how much of their relationship is built up of intense glares and silent conversations? It’s getting dumb. At some point he’s gonna forget how to talk to the guy completely. 

“You said you had a problem,” Cas prompts. 

“Right,” Dean agrees, running a hand over the back of his neck, “See, it’s my birthday at the end of the month,” Dean says, “and I really hate birthdays.” 

Cas looks like he almost wants to smile, but isn’t sure whether or not that’s a good idea. Dean’s taking that as a good sign, really. He glances at the coma patient for a bit of encouragement but receives fuck all, which is just about right really. 

“What’s the point of celebrating the fact that you’re another god damn year older, huh? And Sam wants me to sit through this god awful dinner where we all talk about how much closer I’m getting to forty. What’s the damn point?” 

“I don’t know, Dean.” 

“And, honestly Cas, I don’t know how I’d have gotten though Christmas without you,” 

“Let me guess,” Cas says, expression twisting, “you could do with an out.” 

_Damn. Off the mark, Winchester. Refocus_. 

“Dunno if you’ve noticed,” Dean continues, “but skipping out on celebrations tends to make my family kinda mad. I wind up spending the next couple of days apologising and dragging the thing out for much longer than necessary. So, actually I was just, um, wondering if you wanted to come… to the birthday dinner thing, I mean.” 

He’s been running this conversation over in his head all night. He thought it was pretty good move; reminding Cas about the whole thing they bonded over anyway, whilst also sort of inviting him to meet his family at some point. It’s a bit like saying _I do actually like you Cas,_ whilst also saying, _you’re not actually just a gay experiment like everyone keeps telling me_ without ever having to actually voice either of those thoughts. 

Cas is staring at him. 

“I’ve gotta bitch about shit the whole thing is to someone,” Dean hedges, “I need you, Cas.” 

“Is there anything else?” Cas asks. It’s not a yes thus far, but it’s definitely not a no. It’s one hundred percent an invitation for him to keep talking, that Cas is planning on hearing him out just a little bit more. _Good._

“Yeah, actually,” Dean says, “I’ve got like… another four cold coffees for you in my car. So, I was thinking maybe if I actually had your number and got updates on your schedule I might be able to deliver them hot every once in a while.” 

Cas expression has defrosted considerably, and Dean risks a step into Cas’ personal space. 

“And then if you happened to text me your address I could bring round a pizza at... say, seven tonight?” 

“I like pepperoni,” Cas says. 

“Awesome,” Dean grins. He’s a second away from rambling on about Sam likes vegetables on his pizza and what a weirdo he is, when Cas takes a further step into his personal space. Then his heart’s beating so loud he’s pretty sure it’s gonna wake the coma patient, but Cas’ bottom lip is brushing the corner of his mouth and, well, fuck the coma patient. 

“You don’t happen to have a completely reasonable hate of Valentine’s Day, do you?” Dean asks, so close that he can feel Cas’ huff of laughter in response, “because it’s oncoming. I can feel the frigging pink invasion already.” 

Cas shuts him up with his mouth, which is probably for the best all things considered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I finished! Little later than intended and I'm not 100 percent about this chapter, but I hope you liked it. Sorry about how horrifically... horrific that last scene was. Heh.


End file.
